Here comes the dan again.
.
'Dan' is not Dan Rather or anything. It's a Japanese word meaning a group, team, party, troupe, etc. And it's also a slang word that has very limited use, having something to do with the Japanese newspaper industry.
Dans are recruited on an almost day-to-day basis. You can find it in recruit ads on every tabloid newspaper here in Japan, typically in a phrase like 'dan-boshu.' (we're recruiting a dan.) It means a group of salespeople who visit every house trying to get subscriptions for two Japanese major newspapers that are distributed nationwide.
Sometimes you see middle-aged men clad in business suits, riding bicycles with detergent boxes on the luggage carriers, in the late afternoon in Tokyo or anywhere else.
Last week one of them came to my apartment complex.
Since I knew well who rang the bell, I didn't open the door. He didn't leave until he rang the bell another three times. I pretended to be absent because I'd already subscribed for one of the newspapers a few months before, so I just waited for him to leave. Feeling that he left already, I stepped out and, unfortunately, ran into him downstairs. Apparently aware that I was the one living in the room he vainly knocked on the door at, he looked very incensed. Looking at how furious he was and how accustomed to violence he looked, I thought I might be the third victim to be killed by those dan people in ten years.
Assault or even homicide by the dan people seems to occur every five to seven years here in Japan.
I have no intention of criticizing their sales-promotion activities at all, because technically they are just the salespeople touting the two major newspapers and as such there's nothing wrong with what they're doing .
But nonetheless we have to be as cautious about their recurring visits as we are about other natural disasters that pose risks.
It's bad enough that even after a few homicides by them, nothing seems to have changed in terms of laws or regulations or anything, but the fact that the newspaper companies don't seem to take any responsibility for those felonies seems far more problematic.
I get the impression that those newspapers editorialize on social security issues at least once a week.
'Dan' is not Dan Rather or anything. It's a Japanese word meaning a group, team, party, troupe, etc. And it's also a slang word that has very limited use, having something to do with the Japanese newspaper industry.
Dans are recruited on an almost day-to-day basis. You can find it in recruit ads on every tabloid newspaper here in Japan, typically in a phrase like 'dan-boshu.' (we're recruiting a dan.) It means a group of salespeople who visit every house trying to get subscriptions for two Japanese major newspapers that are distributed nationwide.
Sometimes you see middle-aged men clad in business suits, riding bicycles with detergent boxes on the luggage carriers, in the late afternoon in Tokyo or anywhere else.
Last week one of them came to my apartment complex.
Since I knew well who rang the bell, I didn't open the door. He didn't leave until he rang the bell another three times. I pretended to be absent because I'd already subscribed for one of the newspapers a few months before, so I just waited for him to leave. Feeling that he left already, I stepped out and, unfortunately, ran into him downstairs. Apparently aware that I was the one living in the room he vainly knocked on the door at, he looked very incensed. Looking at how furious he was and how accustomed to violence he looked, I thought I might be the third victim to be killed by those dan people in ten years.
Assault or even homicide by the dan people seems to occur every five to seven years here in Japan.
I have no intention of criticizing their sales-promotion activities at all, because technically they are just the salespeople touting the two major newspapers and as such there's nothing wrong with what they're doing .
But nonetheless we have to be as cautious about their recurring visits as we are about other natural disasters that pose risks.
It's bad enough that even after a few homicides by them, nothing seems to have changed in terms of laws or regulations or anything, but the fact that the newspaper companies don't seem to take any responsibility for those felonies seems far more problematic.
I get the impression that those newspapers editorialize on social security issues at least once a week.
posted by Tanaka @ 12:04 PM
1 Comments:
At 12:44 AM,
Unknown said…
This was really, really interesting. You have a lot of great observations -- I especially like, "we have to be as cautious about their recurring visits as we are about other natural disasters that pose risks."
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