ABSTRACT
Niiyama-cho¯ is a safe, quiet neighborhood. I have never felt threatened while
walking its streets alone, although I have on occasion felt nervous about my safety
in other parts of Japan. Yet at 10 o’clock on a mid-summer night in 1993, a
normally quiet intersection in Niiyama-cho¯ was filled with close to 80 people,
mostly middle-aged women, gathered for the start of a summer “night patrol”
(yakan patoro¯ru) intended as a measure to prevent juvenile delinquency. Dressed
casually in sports shoes and sweat suits, the women patrolled the streets every
Friday night during the junior high school summer recess. The chatter and
laughter emanating from the procession invariably drew an audience. Middle-aged
men stepped outside the yakitori-ya (grilled chicken restaurant) where they had
been eating to watch us pass while a car of teenage boys, the very type imagined to
threaten neighborhood security, slowed down for a better view. Even customers at
the tiny karaoke [sunakku] bars momentarily stopped singing and talking with the
female proprietors to comment on the cause of the late-night commotion.
