A Turkish driver was arrested for drifting on a Japanese public road. The comment section's first question: how does he afford that car?
The questions the article never answers — where does the money come from, what ethnicity is he really, won't prosecutors just drop it — and how a comment section fills them in with guesses. Counted and recorded.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 866 ∕ 17 Something feels off about a Turkish national being able to drive a car like that around Japan. Shouldn't the rules on foreigners working here be stricter? They should be taxed and managed more strictly than the Japanese.
- 2 809 ∕ 22 Leaving this alone until something happens is plain negligence. Drifting is an outdated nuisance, and isn't the car illegally modified? Revoke the licence and confiscate the car.
- 3 511 ∕ 11 If you want to drift that badly, go to a circuit. Or go home to Turkey and do it — they probably wouldn't crack down there, so why come all the way to Japan for this?
- 4 464 ∕ 9 Lately the news keeps saying "Turkish national" instead of "Kurdish." Is that a standard media rule, or is there some story behind it?
- 5 401 ∕ 8 If he causes an accident, you can expect him to flee the country and take no responsibility, so crack down hard. After someone is hurt is too late. This time, my thanks to the police.
I read all 139 parent comments. Total votes: 6,584 'I relate' against 322 'hmm' — 95 to 5. Only 4 comments out of 139 drew more disagreement than agreement. Twenty comments ask where the money for the car comes from (364 supporting votes between them); 24 raise deportation or residency status (332 votes); 38 speak of 'foreigners' as one undivided word (721 votes). Half the anger points at Japan itself: 'crack down every day, not just before the Games' (322), 'prosecutors will just drop the case anyway' (184), 'stop polishing only what the visitors will see' (141). The one comment that defended the drifting — 'like a drift show, skilled and thrilling' — went 17 to 141, the hardest rejection on the page.
In the small hours of August 17, this story broke: police in Aichi Prefecture arrested a 29-year-old company employee, a Turkish national, on suspicion of drift-driving on a public road — deliberately sliding the tires to spin the car, which is illegal on Japanese streets. It happened on a road in the city of Yatomi, and the article says he is believed to have been drifting there repeatedly, with companions.
One more detail matters. The area is near the Port of Nagoya, where the Asian Games and Asian Para Games — a major international sporting event — open next month, and the athletes' accommodation already stands. So the Aichi police announced they will tighten enforcement against this sort of thing "ahead of the Games."
And one detail is conspicuously absent. The article's only word about the car is "passenger vehicle." No make, no model, no price, not a word about how it was obtained. Keep that in mind, because — as you are about to see — the loudest voice in the comment section is about that unwritten car.
I read the thread about seven hours after publication, at 7:30 in the morning: 139 parent comments, 203 including replies. My counting method, for new readers: under every comment, Yahoo! News Japan offers an "I relate" button and a "hmm..." button — the latter being Japan's politest available "no." I count the first as agreement, the second as disagreement. The totals: 6,584 in agreement, 322 in disagreement. 95 to 5.
The day before, I counted the thread about Yasukuni Shrine: it split 63 to 37. Today, 95 to 5. This is the usual face of a Japanese comment section — on most subjects, the readers line up like this, nearly as one.
What the comments say, in order of support
The top comment is not about the driving. It is about the car.
Something feels off about a Turkish national being able to drive a car like that around Japan. Shouldn't the rules on foreigners working here be stricter? They should be taxed and managed more strictly than the Japanese, I say.
トルコ人が日本でこのような車を乗り回せることに違和感を感じる。渡来人の就労に関してもっと厳しくするべきではないか？
日本人よりも厳しく徴収、管理をしなければいけないと思う。866 in agreement, 17 against — first place. "A car like that": the article names no car, but this was television news, and viewers of the footage looked at the car first. The same question appears in blunter form further down.
Every Japanese person is thinking it: nobody needs you coming here to cause trouble like this. How can he afford such an expensive car? What about his licence? Does he even have residency status? The foreign ministry should finally tighten entry rules so people like this never arrive, and the justice ministry should stop accepting fake refugee claims and deport the people wrecking Japan's safety, one after another.
日本人は来日してこんな事で社会に迷惑をかけるのなんか必要無いってみんな思ってんだよ。
なんでこんな高級車に乗れてるんだ、免許はどうした、在留資格はあるのか？
外務省はいい加減入国規制をしてこんなのが日本に来日しない様、また法務省はウソ難民申請など受け付けないで、日本の安心安全を破壊するのをどんどん追放してくれ。"How can he afford such an expensive car?" — 47 in agreement, zero against. Another comment (30 to 1): "How does he manage a life like this? Fake refugee claim, living off relief money — I catch myself assuming it must be something like that." Now pause on that for a moment. The article says nothing about the man's income, how he got the car, his residency status, or any refugee claim. The only word it offers about his circumstances is "company employee." The comment section is filling in unanswered questions with guesses — and most of the agreement votes on this page are being cast for the guesses, not for anything the article reports.
Fourth place reads between different lines — quieter ones.
'Lately I keep seeing the news write Turkish national instead of Kurdish. Is that a standard media rule, or is there some story behind it?'
「ニュースで『クルド人』ではなく『トルコ国籍』と表記されるのを最近よく見る気がする。これって報道の標準ルールなのかな、それとも何か背景があるんだろうか？」464 votes. Some background, because a foreign reader needs it. Among Turkish citizens are Kurds, an ethnic minority, and Japan's Kurdish community — concentrated around the city of Kawaguchi, near Tokyo — has been the subject of a heated public-order controversy for the past few years. The article says only "Turkish national," which is a statement about a passport. It says nothing about ethnicity, which nobody in the thread actually knows. The readers reached for the controversy anyway and asked what the wording was hiding. I have counted this reflex before: in the fake-iPhone thread, where an article said the culprits' origin was "unknown" and the comment section wrote a nationality into the blank.
Third place (511 to 11) is exasperation: "If you want to drift that badly, go to a circuit. Or go home to Turkey and do it there?" And fifth place (401 to 8) says: "If he causes an accident, you can expect him to flee the country and take no responsibility — so crack down hard." Notice: no accident has happened, and nobody has fled. A prediction, treated as settled fact, collects 401 votes. Watch the subject of the sentence grow, step by step: this man — Turkish nationals — Kurds, probably — foreigners. Thirty-eight comments speak of "foreigners" as one undivided word, carrying 721 votes between them; one connects this arrest to a street robbery in a different prefecture and concludes "Japan is being destroyed" (46 votes). But note the counter-current too: a 192-vote comment goes out of its way to say "some of the car-loving foreigners who come to Japan" — there are people in this thread guarding the size of the subject.
There is a second target, and it is not foreign. Half of this thread's anger points at Japan itself. The second-place comment (809 to 22) blames the police, not the driver: "Leaving it alone until something happens — what is that but negligence?" Then: "He'd been doing this for ages, and he only got caught when the special enforcement started. Catch people every day, please" (322). "Stop polishing only the parts the visitors will see. Why does enforcement only get serious for the Games?" (141). And one weary line: "Prosecutors will just drop the case anyway" (184). That refers to fukiso — a prosecutor's decision to close a case without trial — and to a run of news stories where cases involving foreign suspects ended exactly that way. The room has stopped expecting the referee to blow the whistle.
Finally, the one voice this thread refused.
I go night fishing near the port a lot, around the Yatomi interchange, and you hear the engines roar and the tires scream. A decent crowd gathers — it's like a drift show. Thrilling, skilled driving; I catch myself stopping to watch. It lets off steam for drivers and crowd alike, so why not. A patrol car could never catch a drift crew anyway — faster cars, and every one of them a technician.
よく夜釣りに出かけると名古屋港付近弥富インター付近で爆音とタイヤの音が鳴り響いてる 見物人もそこそこいて何かドリフトショーみたいな感じ スリルがあって運転も上手いしついつい見物したくなる 見る方もやってる方もストレス発散になるしいいんじゃないパトカーが来たってドリフト族を捕まえるのは不可能でしょうパトカーより速い車にテクニシャンばかり17 in agreement, 141 against. Of 139 comments, only 4 drew more disagreement than agreement, and this — "I catch myself stopping to watch" — was rejected hardest of all. In yesterday's Yasukuni thread, every stated position drew fire. In today's thread, only one thing draws fire: finding the rule-breaking entertaining.
What I make of it
First, what this comment section most wanted to know was not about the crime. It was about the money. The top comment (866 votes) and the twenty comments behind it (364 votes between them) ask one question: where does the money for that car come from? The article does not answer it. And where the article is silent, guesses — fake refugee claims, relief money, no residency status — collect the votes. The article's silence becomes the best-voted blank on the page, exactly as it did in the fake-iPhone thread.
Second, one arrest climbs a staircase of ever-larger subjects. This man — Turkish national — "Kurdish, probably" — "foreigners." The fifth-place comment predicts a hit-and-run flight that has not happened, and the prediction collects 401 votes as if it were a fact. It took about six hours to reach the top step: "Japan is being destroyed." And yet, on the same page, a 192-vote comment carefully writes "some of the car-loving foreigners" — the generalization and its correction, side by side in one thread.
Third, anger at the foreigner and distrust of Japan's own institutions sit in the same room. The police only move when the world is watching (809, 322, 141 votes); the prosecutors will drop the case anyway (184). This thread's fury runs on two rails: an outsider broke the rules, and the rule-keepers don't look serious about enforcing them.
Fourth, set yesterday and today side by side. Yasukuni split this country's readers 63 to 37. A foreigner drifting on a public road united them 95 to 5. Japan's comment sections divide over how to remember their own history — and close ranks, instantly, in front of a broken rule.
I will keep counting, and I will keep watching.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.