The Vanished - Afterword

Mauger and Remael's book is utter garbage. Unless you like your 'journalism' fabricated, falsified. Google was around in 2014, when the English translation was published; Benjamin, Hector, Charles- any reason you didn't spend a few minutes Googling? Tourists with preconceptions, not journalists. Ignorance of the language, plain ignorance, facts that don't add up, no facts at all- none of this deters Lena et al. Finally, here's Lena.

The Vanished- 16: Tojinbo Cliffs

Mauger and company visit the famed cliffs of Tojinbo, which she describes as "two hours from Tokyo City". Well, the flight from Haneda to Komatsu (nearest airport), Ishikawa, takes an hour. From there it's about 45 minutes to Tojinbo, Fukui, by car. Did the budget stretch to airfare for three and a rental? Overland from Tokyo the journey takes seven hours. (Did they even go there?) Anyhow, Mauger says they've been invited by Shige Yukio, a retired police officer and founder of an NPO whose mission is suicide prevention at the cliffs. Later that day the following bizarre scene unfolds:

So, just like that, it's off to Osaka.

The Vanished - 15: Planet Toyota, and a Mitsubishi

Still in Toyota City. Aichi Prefecture. Lena claims to meet one Peruvian named Freddy who arrived in Japan in 1991 and began working for Toyota that year. According to Lena, he was a temp worker (yes, for nearly 30 years!) and has been laid off by the manufacturer, which she says is letting people go in large numbers in 2010 (?) despite an 8% increase in sales over the previous year (makes no sense, given Toyotism and Just in Time production). Or what year is it? Lena doesn't enlighten. (In any case, Japanese labor statistics don't support her assertion.) Anyway, Freddy wonders- (see photograph)

Problem is, this pic (oh la la, tres symbolique) was taken not in Toyota (or anywhere else in Aichi, for that matter) but in Osaka. Busted by the blue plate. Again. Did Stephane even snap this, Lena? Oh. And the car? It's a Mitsubishi.

The Vanished- 14: Lena Goes to Toyota, Aichi, and Splains Some Things

In which we travel with Mauger and friends to Toyota City, Aichi, to meet "connections". Home to Toyota Motor Corporation, of course, and Lena claims that people are fleeing the "jewel of Japan [which] has been sinking in the recession." Since 2008, and she knows this how? Because "(t)hey say". Let's consider a couple of bits straight off. First: What does the government say about Toyota's population? 2005- 400K 2010- 413K 2015- 414K So that's that. Lena is too preoccupied with her preconceived notions about Toyota (and Japan) to be distracted by mere facts. Moreover, she senses something sinister in "Planet Toyota", where everything is named, you guessed it, Toyota. As in Toyota Station, Toyota Post Office, Toyota Elementary School, Toyota Hospital.. A bit like Niigata City, with its 新潟小学校、新潟高等学校、新潟大学、新潟中央郵便局, 新潟市民病院... A bit like anywhere. "In 1959, the Japanese government renamed the small city of Koromo, known from then on as Toyota City." Nope. This is not the DPRK, Lena. The city assembly did, for multiple reasons: 1) the kanji rendering Koromo were difficult to read: 挙母 (Good luck getting 'Koromo' from that-in fact, Toyota's headquarters adopted katakana: コロモ); 2) to avoid confusion with a city of the same name in Nagano; and 3) to identify the city as home to Toyota Motor Corp.

Drop in sales in 2010? Nope. Toyota reported an 8% jump for that year.

The Vanished- 13: Did You Even Read It?

High praise for this tripe comes from from Benjamin, Hector, and Charles. "Hats off", exclaims Benjamin. (Of prestigious Keio University, no less-just goes to show). From Hector: "I feel the word johatsu will stay in my heart forever." That's unfortunate. From Charles: "I hope the book will be translated into Japanese." Honestly, Chuck, I hope not.

The Vanished 2- More Facts

Mauger and friends travel by shinkansen from Tokyo to hot-spring town Atami, Shizuoka. Why? Because our journalist has been told that people on the run "wash away their pasts in the sulfurous steam of the baths before being reborn elsewhere". Whatever. Because bustling hot-springs resorts are the perfect place to disappear, and easy on the pocketbook. Our investigators stroll through town asking for the evaporated people, Where are they, the 'johatsu'?- and are met with evasion, in Mauger's telling (it's not just Americans that are ugly overseas). Finally, they are directed to one Doctor Uchida, "the physician of the springs". Meaning? So they troop off, locate the good doctor, ask him about vanished people and hot springs (well, Guy does, presumably). Doc Uchida shares this:

Now, either the sawbones is in his dotage or, as I prefer to think, it's complete bullsh*t. Fukuda murdered a co-worker. Former. Singular. This was in Matsuyama, Ehime. During her 15 years on the lam, from 1982-1997, she was in a number of places: Nagoya, yes, Osaka, yes, Kanazawa and Fukui, yes and yes, but Shizuoka? No.

The Vanished 1: Fact-check: Vanishing Act

Mauger first published on Japan's 'evaporated' in 2009 in the magazine XXI, so presumably she and her collaborators visited Japan earlier that year or, more likely, 2008. From the jacket: "Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace." Mauger's book lacks a bibliography, so readers are left to dig into this surprising claim themselves. (Because it is a head-scratching figure and invites digging.) Really? 100K? No trace, never found? Here are the numbers, courtesy of the National Police Agency. From the year 2008: 84, 739 missing persons reports, 78, 668 cases closed. Let's consider the first year for which both figures are available, 1966: 91, 593, and 63, 667, respectively. Finally, in 2022: 84,910 and 80, 653. The data goes back to 昭和31, or 1956, and since then the annual figure for missing persons has reached or exceeded 100K in just 11 years. Not only that, but never have "nearly one hundred thousand people" permanently vanished. Habemus Corpus. Just where did Mauger get her numbers? Chubby Guy? Methinks the filmmaker's Japanese skills did not extend to internet searches in the language. Or was it "facts are so passe"? Or perhaps the triumvirate decided they were entitled to their own.

"The Vanished"- Introduction

In which Lena Mauger, avid traveler and magazine journalist, and Stephane Remael, photographer, propose to tell of "The Evaporated People Of Japan In Stories And Photographs". A tall order for Mauger and Remael, as neither speaks Japanese, and Translate wasn't a thing. So they enlist the services of one Guy (no surname), a "chubby filmmaker on the cusp of retirement". (Is any of that relevant? Meaning not particularly busy, thus free to tag along as Lena chases this non-story?) At least he's got a Japanese wife and some degree of Japanese fluency, apparently- so this Guy is on board as interpreter. As night falls over the Place de Clichy, Guy regales Mauger with "all the little things that, for him, make Japanese living so serene". You know: "the feminine gentleness, the elegance of movement, the efficiency of public transportation". Was chubby guy having her on? Place de Cliche. Anyhow, it's Guy who mentions "*a strange phenomenon: every year, thousands of Japanese people leave their homes and never return." According to our filmmaker, **Japan has more missing persons than any other country. Now, I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but there's something(s) slightly off about this tete a tete: if Mauger first hears about this phenomenon from Guy, then what was the subject of her original investigation? Anyhow, "there we were, two months later, foreign to this enigmatic culture, our only compass being our guide's perseverance in the face of shadows..." Nauseating, I agree. As for the "compass"- we shall see in later installments whether a sextant wouldn't have been the smarter choice.

* One of the few accurate claims in the entire book. In fact, tens of thousands are reported missing every year, with all but a few thousand found within 72 hours. Lena vastly inflates this figure. But of course. Because, Mon Dieu, the story. Among the 2-4K not found annually: those who have come to grief, whose bodies are never located; those suffering dementia who wander off with no ID; and, the truly vanished, those who do not want to be found, for any number of reasons. ** Sure about that, Guy? Take a peek at figures for the US.