It's in black and white

Noboru Otsuki is a tax cheat. That’s what the newspapers wrote, and when an individual’s name appears in black and white here in the public record—no matter the stage of investigation—you can take it as fact.

Prosecutors and police showed up at Otsuki-san’s home a few weeks ago to carry out a search. Actually they “carried out” a lot of things: his PC, his books, a few wardrobes, and what seemed to be the entire contents of a private office where Otsuki-san and his wife run the family’s small, high-end stationery business.

When the day was done, five or six TV and print reporters close to the Justice Ministry gathered for a briefing on events. Investigators carefully spelled out the correct kanji for his name and said Noboru Otsuki is a tax cheat. There will be a trial at some point, but I don’t think anyone is interested in that formality.

Japanese kibbitz quite a bit. Neighbors now gesture at his house when passing by, and say, “That’s the tax cheat’s place, you know.”

I want to shush them and say you don’t really know that. But the response I know would be swift and confident—sure they know it, it was all in the paper.

I have to say, after all these years in Japan, I find myself also becoming susceptible to prejudices. Otsuki-san’s house has a small window display along the side highlighting some of his stationery shop’s best work. A little showcase of pride. Recently I caught myself looking at a beautiful paperweight, stapler, and a sheaf of handmade paper and whispering to myself “Tax cheat.”

Who knows, the allegations could all be true. But I do have my suspicions this could be less tax dodging and more something like mistakes made on annual returns combined with having a few enemies in high places. Noboru Otsuki, you see, is a decent man and we all know it. He is the type who brings small “apology for the disuption gifts” around to the neighbors when gardeners will be trimming his hedges. I’ve seen him also cleaning up other peoples’ strewn garbarge after the bags had been ravaged by crows before pickup.

If he’s a tax cheat, he’s a pretty humble one.

Noboru Otsuki is in his seventies. To protect his balding head, he wears a straw fedora in the hot summer months and a felt one in the winter. When the neighborhood gathers for summer matsuri, Otsuki-san is invariably dressed in a pressed cotton yukata and geta sandals. He drives a Toyota sedan.

He has one daughter who stops by a few times a week to look in on her aging parents. Noboru is the third son of a grocer/merchant family that ran a small chain of houseware shops on the east side of Tokyo, I believe in Sumida Ward. His grandfather, father, and Noboru himself all graduated from Waseda University—a good, striving upper-middle-class pedigree though the Japanese often deny they have social classes.

He told me once he studied a year abroad in London. I had mentioned that I enjoy a small English tea room in Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku named Babbington’s. Otsuki-san’s eyes lit up and he said the scones there are wonderful. He added that ever since his youthful days in London he continues to drink Earl Grey tea each afternoon. “A habit I cannot break,” he said.

I think I should pop by to see Mrs. Otsuki soon. Funny thing though, in Japan nobody just stops in on someone unless they are family or the closest of friends. I’ll need a plausible reason to be ringing their bell.