mytest

Well, here’s a surprise. Incorporated into an online video game (a first-person shoot ’em up called “Counter Strike, Condition Zero”, one of the most popular, with customizable characters, weapons, and backgrounds), here is a scene where our hero gunman faces a door with a “JAPANESE ONLY” sign.

Believe it or not, that is a copy and paste from the Otaru Yunohana Onsen sign (up between 1998 and 2000), defendant in a lawsuit for racial discrimination between 2001 and 2004 (which it lost). More on that here. (I was one plaintiff in that case.)

Here’s a screen capture of the scene (click thumbnail for larger image):

Here’s a picture of the original Japanese Only sign, for comparison’s sake:

BTW, the scene apparently didn’t make the final cut.
http://www.geocities.jp/palaceofdune/cscz2/list1.html
(Japanese text)

Amazing to think how far this case and lawsuit has entered the popular culture. Not only has it been featured on entrance and final exams for law degrees in Japan, I’m told it also has been cited as one of the twenty most influential postwar law cases in a Waseda University law publication, not to mention overseas textbooks studying Japanese law.

Now it’s been slipped into a video game? I wonder if as the gunman character I could have used the gun to shoot the sign up. Oh, well, I can dream, can’t I?

Thanks to Dan for notifying me. I wonder what’s on the other side of that doorway… Not me I hope. 🙂 Debito in Sapporo