Re: [tlug] Something Called Gaimen Kirikae...

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

On 07/18/2013 10:38 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> International driving permits are authorized by treaty.  I think
> they're mostly between individual country-pairs.  Evidently Japan and
> Brazil haven't made one.  This doesn't surprise me, there are a number
> of reasons why I would expect quite a bit of official friction between
> the two countries.

I think you'll find that it is a far more general treaty than that -- 
it's called the Treaty of Vienna, but there are a number of Treaties of 
Vienna covering a wide variety of things.  Like Hague Conventions of the 
modern age but more from the League of Nations time period.  Japan likes 
to accept treaties conditionally.  That means that they sign them but 
don't really intend to follow them too closely and do whatever they 
damned well please in the name of that treaty.  Thus, if you are a 
former motorcycle racer and designer who has ridden bikes of all engine 
displacement class sizes since the age of 13 (mutter, mutter, mutter), 
your California drivers license is only good for bikes up to 400cc 
unless you take the Oogata-menkyosho test for unlimited displacement.  
And they automatically fail you on the first try to teach you humility 
-- or so the retired cop told me when I got pissed off and showed him a 
photo of yours truly in CHP uniform astride a Kawasaki 1000 Police 
Special -- after which I was told to go out and start the test bike.  
The tester said "Omedetou!" and I had a motorcycle license. Others were 
not as fortunate.  Several months later, I watched Kork Ballington, the 
250cc and 350cc World Road Race Champion fail the test three times.

Brazil is also a signatory to the Vienna Convention and Brazilian 
licenses can be converted to local licenses in most countries. Japan 
does not recognize Brazilian licenses due to a problem created by 
Japan.  During the Bubble Jidai, there was a huge need for assembly line 
workers at car and car part factories, and later at electronics plants.  
There weren't enough native Japanese to fill all of the factory slots, 
so the government got the bright idea to go to the governments of 
countries to which they'd shipped off Japanese in the early 1900s to 
start farms and run shops in new lands.  Brazil has one of the largest 
of these Japan expat populations and alot of those people were not ... 
umm ... economically secure.  So, the bright lights at the Justice, 
Labor, and Health Ministries (Labor and Health were still separate back 
then) conspired to create a special visa class for the descendants of 
Japanese settlers in Brazil and anyone who had a Japanese ancestor or 
even a Japanese-sounding name could apply for a visa and come work in 
factories mostly in Gifu, Gunma, or Aichi.

One of the rules for allowing these people in was that they possess a 
return ticket "home"  and that it be kept handy in case the Japanese 
economy collapsed precipitously -- except there were so many safeguards 
in place that no one would ever be just rounded up and shipped back 
quickly.  These Brazilians were also given Japanese drivers licenses 
against their Brazilian ones so that they could drive back and forth to 
work.

Then the fun began.

There were several dozen accidents caused by Brazilian drivers who were 
either under insured or uninsured.  At least half a dozen were fatal for 
a Japanese driver or passenger.  It became SOP for the Brazilian driver 
to call a friend or family member from the accident site and ask them to 
bring their passport, a suitcase full of clothes, and their return 
ticket and give them a ride to the Nagoya Airport, from where they'd 
catch the next flight(s) back to Brazil, where there was no extradition 
treaty with Japan.  The news shows were making hay following Brazilian 
miscreants back to various cities and following them around with open 
microphones.  A couple of them were so obnoxious that the local citizens 
treated them to some locally administered justice and sent them back to 
Japan on stretchers.  So, the bright lights got together again and 
decided that Brazilian drivers needed special attention in order to be 
permitted to drive in Japan.

Short story told long.  Respectfully submitted.

--
CL