The Japanese are known for being polite, sometimes too polite. Westerners generally considered the Japanese to be inherently dishonest, especially during the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods, as the Japanese would not be honest and up front with the large numbers of gaijin that were flooding Japan at the time. The general social outlook of the Japanese is not to be directly confrontational and be agreeable, even if in fact they in any particular situation they disagreed with whatever another person was saying. That politeness and agreeability can lead to misunderstandings and confrontation later when what was understood as agreement was instead just the Japanese not being socially disagreeable by saying no. Obviously this leads to problems, with the modern post-war Japanese solution to be unusually tolerant of social faux pas of the gaijin.

However, the Japanese are becoming less tolerant of rude behavior of gaijin. The Japanese police arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, then deported the notorious Johnny Somali. The Japanese are increasingly upset with black and Kurdish criminals claiming asylum in Japan, then becoming ongoing social problems including public transit spectacles common in New York and elsewhere in America, but almost unknown in Japan.

数年前の山手線
床に寝転びながら歌う迷惑ヘッドホン外人 pic.twitter.com/wDTRA7j1V0

— 高い城館の男 (@highcastle13) June 9, 2024

Here's the translation:

The latest problem is again an English expatriate. English expats seem to have some problem with Japan and the Japanese, perhaps because they are janissaries for globalist interests.

Ever since it happened two weeks ago, Joshua Sherlock and his wife Mayumi have been afraid to go outside. Until he disconnected it, strangers were ringing his phone and abusing him. Unknown people turned up and prowled around their apartment block in the Japanese city of Kyoto. One anonymous Twitter/X user posted a call for it to be burnt down.

Japanese Hospitality Wears Thin As Overtourism Takes Toll, by Richard Lloyd Parry, The Sunday Times, June 7, 2024

According to Sherlock, it was all a misunderstanding, but it is hard to believe that a random Japanese person would be so upset at something without just cause. The Japanese aren’t like blacks who want to shoot it out over every social media insult.

It began with the ringing of a bell. Sherlock runs walking tours for foreign visitors to Kyoto — a thriving business in a country where inbound tourism is booming like never before. On the evening of May 23, he was with a small group in Yasaka Jinja, a Shinto shrine in the heart of the city. As he had many times before, he showed his four elderly clients how to offer prayers at the shrine, a ritual of bowing, clapping and ringing a bell attached to a thick rope.

They were approached by a Japanese woman who complained that one of the tourists, a British woman, had behaved disrespectfully by shaking the bell too vigorously. Sherlock says that both he and the British visitor apologised. The Japanese woman, who has identified herself only as Fujino, insists that he rudely brushed her off. Either way, heated words were exchanged before Sherlock and his group left the shrine.

The problem appears to be associated with over-tourism for certain, and rude behavior of tourists in general, that irks the Japanese.

The city of Fujikawaguchiko recently erected a black barrier to block a popular view of Mount Fuji, because of “nuisance” caused to locals by the crowds of tourists milling around taking photographs. Despite being 12,389ft high, even the peak of Mount Fuji itself has become congested — a 2,000 yen (£10) entrance fee is being levied. Nowhere, however, has been swamped by a larger tourism tsunami than Kyoto, a city known even within Japan for its conservative attitudes and high standards of decorum…

The famous geisha — or maiko, as they are known in Kyoto — often complain of being stalked by tourists with cameras, and there is undoubtedly a bit more litter on the ground where foreign tourists congregate. The accumulation of minor nuisances is generating pressure which is beginning to explode in small incidents, of which the incident in the Yasaka shrine is just the most extreme.

But Japanese observers have suggested that Sherlock was not as polite as he claims and appears to be of a type found in Japan, the Westerner living on the fringes of Japanese society, usually involved in some profession that more akin to being a tourist that actually being part of Japanese society. In this group you find tour guides, YouTubers, and assorted outcasts from the West, who, even if they aren’t bad or disruptive of Japanese society, do attract those like Johnny Somali, who are just criminals. 

#拡散希望 #緊急
4/3 15:38
来日中の迷惑系配信者アイスポセイドン @REALIcePoseidon が私 @canceljohnnys の住所や個人情報を特定したと発言
本日配信終了後に弁護士を伴い自宅へ行きすべての情報を暴露すると脅迫した
私が配信を妨害したと一方的に決めつけている
現在タクシーで大黒ふ頭に向かう https://t.co/tBVT6LF2jc pic.twitter.com/N4gS7w5ID0

— ジョニーリマソ (@canceljohnnys) April 3, 2024

Gaijin Nuisance Streamers Are a Problem in Japan

A Japanese netizen is reporting that Sherlock was rude and dishonest concerning his side of the story.

I'm sorry but I think you've completely missed the important part of this incident. Did you see the video for yourself? It was the guide who was very menacing and rude. He manipulated the two languages, telling the guests he had no idea what was going on (he completely understood…

— Atsuko Yamamoto🇯🇵 (@piyococcochan2) June 8, 2024

Here is the rest of the post on X:

A British tour guide living in Japan and several guests were violently ringing the bell, a sacred object, at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto at night. When the woman tried to tell them to be quiet by showing the translate App on her iPhone, the guide got angry and repeatedly told her in Japanese to shut up and go away. (The woman started recording here.) As he says in the video, he has lived in Japan for 8 years and has a Japanese wife.

To the tourists who did not understand Japanese, he acted as if he were a victim who had been stalked by a crazy Japanese, while he cursed her in Japanese so that the guests wouldn’t understand. And now, this Briton allegedly is going to sue her for publishing the video on X.

Overtourism has increased the number of such ill-mannered tourists. After this incident, the shrine in question took measures to prevent the ringing of the bell during night visit.

Are you deliberately changing the conversation to defending unlicensed foreign guides?An unauthorized guide failed to stop several foreigners from being disrespectful at a Japanese religious site. When the Japanese woman who found it warned her,He was working as a tour guide in… pic.twitter.com/bM0MJgomO4

— kcs🎌 (@k68960189) June 9, 2024

Sherlock seems rude and obnoxious to me. He is certainly not apologizing. He should be doing a deep bow and apologize for his behavior even if he thought he was in the right. The polite thing to do in Japan is to apologize to another person for any wrong, real or imagined. The bow and the apology are social lubricant that helps keep Japan so peaceful and working efficiently. And his eight years in Japan provide no excuse for his rudeness.

The Dozega, Done When Sincerely Apologizing

Sherlock seems to have a bad reputation for his business as well.

Tripadvisor reviews of the tour company tell the truth. Some are saying the tour guide is scam and don't hesitate to go to the police. These are all before the incident.https://t.co/wfjwTdDZZH pic.twitter.com/VrXsPBgo1u

— Atsuko Yamamoto🇯🇵 (@piyococcochan2) June 8, 2024

It seems British tourists have an ongoing problem in other locales, not just Japan.

British holidaymakers in Spain may face escalating outbreaks of ‘tourism phobia’ from locals this year over increasing pressures on services, with foreign visitor numbers set to rise even further.

Experts from Spain’s tourist industry have predicted that 2024 will be a record year for visitors to the to the [sic] UK’s favourite holiday destination.

However residents, faced with a sense that their towns and cities are becoming invaded by tourists who do not respect their customs and lives, are increasingly voicing their opposition …

In Barcelona, the slogan “Tourists go home” has been daubed on walls in popular tourist areas like Gràcia and Barrio Gòtico, and campaigners have attacked tourist buses in the past.

Last year, in Arona in Gran Canaria, demonstrators started attacking tourists saying, “we want an ecological balance, go home!” They called some tourists “monkeys”.

‘Go Home’: British Tourists In Spain Face Protests And Anti-Foreigner Graffiti, Graham Keeley, iNews, March 7, 2024

The Japanese certainly don’t want to become another Spain.

Whatever happened there, the reality is that the Japanese are being pushed to their limit and are unhappy with not only with foreign criminals but also with the general rudeness of foreigners there.

But she expresses no regret for the consequences that her posts have had for him and his family. One of her tweets carries the hashtags #kyototourism and #GetOutOfJAPAN …

“She was very menacing. It seemed to me from the beginning that she was looking for some trouble. Something so trivial has had such an effect on our lives. It’s shown me a dark underbelly of Japanese society — there are so many wonderful, lovely, kind Japanese people. But unfortunately these extremist people do exist.”

This so-called “dark underbelly” is a common refrain from the globalist press in Japan, they really hate that the Japanese remain stubbornly Japanese. These globalists want to destroy Japan by immigration and use incidents like this to spread the theme of a violent and intolerant Japan. What is the truth is that the Japanese have long been too tolerant of the machinations of globalists and the globalist attacks on Japan.

Trust me, being told off for being rude is not the “dark underbelly” of Japan, you’ll know when you have pushed the samurai too far. And you don’t want to see the dark underbelly of Japan. You’ll get it good and hard.

The Japanese fear for their nation. The fear is real and growing, but journalists like Richard Lloyd Perry (contact him here) are cranking out anti-Japanese drivel. It is really hard to understand why someone would live in Japan if he hates it so much and wants it to be another multi-cultural hellhole like Londonistan or Haiti [The Japan That Can Say Shinzo Abe, by Federale, Federale Blog, October 5, 2019 and The Japan That Can Say Banzai, by Federale, Federale Blog, November 17, 2019]. But the Japanese are not having it anymore.