Essay

Don't kill the messenger

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

When people offer hints or advice — such as "you've got a little piece of broccoli on your lip" or "you're driving on the wrong side of the road, doofus" — the message isn't always welcome, even if it's well-intentioned. Instead, people would rather squash the messenger than calmly process the message. But sometimes advice is something we can ill-afford to ignore. I offer some here.

Years ago, I went off on a trip abroad with my husband, who warned me to leave all my valuables in our Tokyo apartment, where they would be safe. I shared his sense that it's foolish to travel with lots of jewelry, so I left behind my grandmother's wedding ring, and everything else I really valued. While we were gone, our newspapers piled up in the mail slot of our front door — nota bene: this is a neon invitation for robbers — and we returned to utter chaos. Burglars had ransacked our place, and made off with all our portable valuables.

The police came and told us they suspected we were victims of a Japanese gang they were tracking. They said over two hundred break-ins had been reported that month in our area. They recommended various new locks for our windows and doors, then we never heard from them again.

For a while I was in shock. I spent a week stomping on the old cliche that "Japan is a very safe country," even though I knew then and I still feel that gun control and the overwhelming honesty of Japanese citizens makes the country safer than most. For a while I grieved over my losses; my grandmother gave me her wedding ring the day she died, and it was gone, as was the pretty ring my husband had given me in an early flush of love and generosity. But eventually, even a fool grasps that enduring affection is what counts, not the symbolic chattel.

Nonetheless, I went out and bought locks and installed them immediately. Then I went door to door in my building to raise the alarm and hand out specs on the lock types the police had suggested. As a messenger, I ran into some surprises.

Two neighbors I spoke to confessed that they had been robbed in the month previous to our break-in. Why had they not reported it, or warned the rest of us, I asked, stunned. Embarrassment, answered one. Another argued that apartment values decrease in areas with high crime stats, so reporting to the police was akin to getting victimized twice. At the last apartment I visited, I was abruptly dismissed over the speaker phone by a woman who pointed out that her apartment was better situated than ours, more exposed to the street and therefore unlikely to be targeted.

I mulled over these reactions, sensing how vulnerable our building had become, with tenants divided by self-consciousness and self-concerns rather than united by an ethos of mutual support.

About six months later, I was shopping for groceries when the tenant of the "safely situated" apartment approached me suddenly. She apologized for her rebuff at the time, and asked if I could still tell her what kind of locks she should buy. Her place had just been hit, too, she admitted. I remember thinking, as we talked locks, that robbers had stolen our stuff, but revitalized our appreciation of solidarity. Message delivered.

Shukan ST: April 3, 2009

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