¡°Am I the only one who gets frisked five times a year?¡± was a question posed on Facebook by a black man living in Tokyo late last year, as he related the systematic and apparently racially motivated harassment he¡¯s received at the hands of Tokyo¡¯s finest over the course of his 10 years here.
The post distressed me. Though I haven¡¯t found myself on the business end of undue police attention anywhere near the frequency he has, I felt his humiliation vicariously. I also happen to know the gentleman personally, and if his isn¡¯t the name on top of the Metropolitan Police Department¡¯s list of Foreign Citizens Beyond Reproach, it ought to be.
By any profile aside from a racialized one, it would be unlikely that Jesse Freeman would ever find himself in the cross-hairs of law enforcement. He¡¯s a 32-year-old native of Baltimore who has spent his time here tirelessly putting his mind and talents to creative use. In addition to being a filmmaker who has held numerous standing-room-only screenings of short films he¡¯s directed and produced, he¡¯s an extortionate fee away from becoming an ikebana shihan (Japanese artistic flower-arranging instructor). He has even fashioned his own style of minimalistic ikebana, which he has displayed in exhibits in Tokyo.
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