Community Fee

The tickets are booked. I'm going back to Japan on the 23rd of this month. It will be a ten day trip which will compose of a mix of work, house work and leisure. This time it will be a boys trip as Shizuka is not accompanying me (BOO HOO she says). Instead a bunch of fellow NZ car dealers is set to descend on Kameoka City. 

Shizuka has told me to keep a low profile when I'm there however. The reason for this is that we did not pay the local community fee last year. Now this fee is one of these typical Japan "we don't know what its for but we've always paid it anyway" deals. This one in particular irks me. I've tried to get to the bottom of it but have had no luck. It started last year when we were house hunting. A real estate agent showed us a house nearby and told us that the community fee was 12000 yen per month. As we weren't really interested in the house I never quizzed him on what that was for. Later that trip when I was at Shizuka's parents place I asked them how much their community fee was. It was.....10,000 yen per year. Quite a difference. As you do, I then asked what exactly one received for this. This question touched off a colourful debate. It seems the idea of a community is respected and desirable in Japan. Where this falls down is in the Japanese inability to communicate meaningfully with each other in even the most basic social situations. 

The in Law's house was built at the same time as the surrounding houses on their side of the street. These families are part of the community. Some time later, several houses were built across the street but these people are not part of the community. Never mind that they live 5 metres away. They are not our people. They belong to another community. Ignoring the patent absurdity of that proposition, I inquired as to how close knit their community is. The answer is not at all. Most of them don't even know each others names and the idea of actually going into a neighbours house is just about unheard off. So obviously these guys don't exactly love each other. Ok then. So this money you hand over to the community that you don't particularly care for....what do you get for it? In Asahicho there is a cleanup day a couple of times a year. Theres a shrine that gets a scrub up, the roadside verges are maintained and rubbish is removed.  It seems that the money is somehow connected to this event. There was talk of drinks and snacks for the people doing the cleaning. Now, where I'm from, we pay taxes to the local government and its the responsibility of the city to keep public places clean, free of weeds etc. I know that you pay taxes here too so how come you have to clean up the street and cut down weeds? All this cleaning does not extend to peoples own property however. It's quite OK to dump a rusty old bicycle and a bathtub on you boundary as long as you show up to do some weed whacking along the street. It seems to me that the cleaning bit is just a justification for a bit of enforced community spirit. Nobody would do it if they weren't under pressure to show up and participate. 

None of this answers my question about what the money is for though. It was then revealed that there is a community dinner held every year. For a few seconds I had visions of a street party in the neighbourhood but no, its held at a local restaurant and you pay your own bill. So, nobody can tell me what has happened to the Y10,000.  A few jugs of green tea and some rice balls for snacks seems to be the end result of a not inconsiderable amount of money. I was about to write the whole thing off as a generic Japanese society rip off and change the subject when Shizukas mother insisted that I must pay the community fee however much it is. To not do so will show that I am a bad person, not a part of the community and nobody will like me. I pointed out to her that as a gaijin I am already assumed to be these things. She replied that people in community's look after each others property and if you don't pay your fee nobody will watch over your house. So it seems that the neighbour hood watch idea exists here just like at home. I told the in laws that us savage gaijins also did neighbour hood watch programs but that we did not have to hand over any money to look out for each other. 

Community boundaries...obscure.

It was time to make a big statement. I said that I wouldn't pay anything until I knew what it was for and then only if I agreed with what was to be done with the money. To me, the city is responsible for the roadside, parks and other public areas and the local shrine is the local monks problem.  I also object to people going on about doing ones duty to clean up the area when their own front yards are full of junk and their houses are eyesores. From their shocked reaction, I could see that this is nothing short of heresy. Various arguments were made as to why I must pay but it all boils down to this....You are not a good neighbour if you don't pay the fee. How is being a good neighbour linked to paying some fee for god knows what? By complying your are fitting in. It's the old Japanese conformist, collective society. That self same one that stifles creativity and individuality and turns people into unthinking, unquestioning robots. These people will live across the street from each other for years but are so irrelevant to each other that that basic things such as their names will remain unknown. Communities that are so blindly indifferent to each other it beggars a westerners belief. 

The community fee is a bribe. A way to buy approval. You may not know or care anything about the guy next door but his opinion of you is of such importance you will unquestioningly pay any amount of money to maintain a good impression. In the finest western tradition I decided then and there that, fuck it, theres no way I'm going to pay it. I want nothing to do with such an attitude. Shizuka agrees with me 100%  This way of thinking is the worst thing about living and working in Japan and the greatest threat to their future.  I doubt that anybody from Hatano cho will approach me for this fee. After all, we don't really live here. Still, if they do, both barrels are loaded.