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Japanese and guns: Linguistics and caution

By Tom Aaron

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 22Mar2009 Word count: 597 Viewed: 356 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

On October 17, 1992, Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student studying in Louisiana, drove with his homestay brother to a Halloween party. They went to the wrong home, that of Rodney and Bonnie Peairs. Rodney Peairs, a supermarket butcher, stepped outside of his home, armed with a .44 magnum revolver with a laser sight. Who knows why Peairs felt threatened by a Japanese high school student in a tuxedo. Peairs said, "Freeze." Hattori apparently did not understand and walked toward Peairs. Peairs shot and killed Hattori.

Newspapers and talk shows in Japan and America repeated again and again that Hattori would have been alive if he had understood the word "freeze," but the problem was not linguistics. Hattori did not understand that you should stop when you see someone with a gun. Do not walk toward them. Language is not relevant. This, however, was certainly no excuse for Peairs, a supermarket butcher, to kill a high school student who had come to America to study English. We certainly cannot blame Hattori for his death, even though he made a fatal mistake. We cannot expect him to think that ringing the wrong doorbell will result in a butcher shooting him with a .44 magnum.

Peairs's .44 magnum revolver was the gun popularized by Dirty Harry, who described the gun as "the most powerful handgun in the world". Dirty Harry was holding this gun when he said, "Make my day." A butcher working in a supermarket has little need for such a gun. Few Americans need such a gun, but they are easily available in America. If they were not, Hattori might still be alive today. Peairs had probably seen Dirty Harry in action. Perhaps he fantasized about helping to rid America of crime. Hattori paid the price.

Japan is not 100% free of guns, but it is very close. Some hunters have guns and some of the yakuza, who are Japanese gangsters, have guns, but the average citizen in Japan is highly unlikely to see a gun or be injured by one. Japanese live in much greater danger of choking to death on some rice product, not exactly a death that strikes fear into the Japanese heart. Japanese often imagine that all Americans have guns. While this is obviously not true, enough of the wrong people have guns.

The NRA says that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. While Americans are divided on this statement, Japanese are not. Japan does have its problems, but guns are not one worth mentioning. The Japanese populace appears perfectly happy with an almost gun free society. Still, many Japanese are in love with America and the freedom and individuality America represents to them. Some of them travel to America and find death instead of freedom. Hattori was neither the first nor the last Japanese to die a violent death in America.

American movies are popular in Japan, including Clint Eastwood movies. A generation of Japanese and Americans watched Dirty Harry movies with fascination and applause, entertained by Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry may not have played by the rules, but he never shot the wrong man. Peairs, a butcher in more ways than one, did.

Japan was outraged and couldn't understand. Many Americans were outraged again over a needless gun death as they had been before and would be again. Still, gun deaths continue in America as guns are easy for anyone to buy legally or illegally. The question is how much carnage is necessary for the United States to have the desire and the will to stop these gun deaths.

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