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Man arrested in Japan after walking around supermarket in a monkey mask

Casey Baseel Oct 29, 2020
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There’s no law against his monkey business, but something else landed him in trouble with the police.

The question of whether Japanese fashion is bold or conservative doesn’t have a simple answer. Yes, as far as baseline tastes go, most people aren’t into loud patterns or flashy colors. At the same time, though, Japan’s cultural value for not picking fights or sticking your nose in other people’s business means that those with iconoclastic aesthetic sensibilities can generally wear whatever they want when going about their daily business without getting hassled over their choice of apparel.

But there are still limits to what you can wear without freaking people out, as demonstrated by what happened in the town of Tomakomai, Hokkaido Prefecture, on Sunday afternoon. At around 3 p.m., the police received an unusual call from a concerned citizen, who told them:

“There’s a person walking around in the supermarket wearing a monkey mask.”

▼ Tomakomai looks like a town where even an actual monkey would stand out, much less a person dressed as one.

And no, they weren’t talking about someone who was practicing good health citizenship by wearing an anti-coronavirus face mask with a cute monkey illustration decoration, but a full-on simian-style face covering. Many stores in Japan have policies prohibiting complete face coverings, such as visored motorcycle helmets, for crime-prevention purposes, which could have been a factor in contacting the police.

When officers performed a search of the area, they found a 65-year-old man sitting down with a bag next to him, and the monkey mask on top of the bag. Upon searching the bag, they found a boxcutter, and the man was arrested for violation of the Firearm and Sword Control Law, which, among other things, limits the size of bladed instruments that can be carried around without a specified valid purpose.

The man says that he is a construction worker who had come to Tomakomai after finishing work in Sapporo, roughly 65 kilometers (40 miles) to the north in order to catch the ferry from the city’s port. As for the boxcutter, he says he’d used it for work a month ago, and had forgotten to take it out of his bag afterwards.

None of that, however, explains why he was walking around the supermarket with a monkey mask on, and while that wouldn’t be the strangest thing someone has done while drunk, police reports indicate that the man did not appear to be intoxicated at the time, and his motive for the animal kingdom cosplay remains unknown.

Sources: Yahoo! Japan News/HBC Hokkaido Hoso via Hachima Kiko, Yahoo! Japan News/STV News
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Wikipedia/Alberth2
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