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sinceileftyoublog · 2 years

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Gabriel Kahane Interview: Ethic of Love

Photo by Jason Quigley

BY JORDAN MAINZER

During a time when the only safe way for us to connect with each other was in the digital realm, Gabriel Kahane was offline.

In late 2019, the singer-songwriter and composter decided to run an experiment: spend a year away from the Internet and see what happens. Like many of us, Kahane was addicted to his phone, whether on social media, reading the news, or constantly taking in podcasts or records. He was curious to see how his life and maybe even his brain changed as a result of new habits. The curiosity didn’t come out of nowhere, either; Kahane had always been up for some sort of technology-less adventure of diaristic discovery, like the time he took an almost 10,000-mile train trek without his phone the day after Donald Trump was elected President, a journey that eventually make up his 2018 album Book of Travelers. Perhaps his Internet-less year would inspire another record.

We all know what happened in March 2020. A few days before the shit hit the fan with COVID, the then-NYC-based Kahane traveled to Portland for what was supposed to be one week. He never returned and now lives there. Despite being forced to lock down, Kahane for the most part stuck to his promise to himself to refrain from logging on. In the middle of spending time in a new city and finding composer work, he tried to write some songs about his perception of the world at large, an experience he told me over the phone last month was “paralyzing.” Finally, during his final month offline, Kahane started a new experiment: Write a new song every day. “It forced me to write about smaller, more modest things instead of attempting to write the Great American Novel in every song,” he said. Finally, from that experiment, came Kahane’s new album Magnificent Bird, out March 25th on Nonesuch.

The 10-song album is very much a collaborative effort, and yes, Kahane is aware of the irony that it wouldn’t have been possible without the technology to record remotely during the pandemic. He doesn’t feel the need to justify the contradiction; after all, it’s better to be safe, and this was an easy way for Kahane to interact with some of his good friends who were busy with their own projects. Remarkably, many of the songs sound like they were recorded live, all musicians in the same room. Casey Foubert’s drums and Alexandra Sopp’s flutes and whistles bolster “Hot Pink Raingear”. Pekka Kuusisto’s gorgeous violin provide a contrast in depth to Kahane’s stark piano and spacey synthesizers on “The Hazelnut Tree”. Caroline Shaw provides harmonically perfect backing vocals on “To Be American”, which also features Americana and indie rock giants like Andrew Bird and Chris Thile and Paul Kowert of the Punch Brothers. And Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath duets with Kahane on “Linda & Stuart”, a tune about an elderly couple in isolation during COVID.

As you might expect, Magnificent Bird is riddled with references to Kahane’s year offline juxtaposed with a world filled with instant access to goods and services. “The trucks judder down city block / Young men bobble boxes full of almond milk and cell phone chargers / Packed up in the skin of dying trees / Baby, if that ain’t progress / Then what’s it gonna be?” Kahane sneers on “Hot Pink Raingear”. But he avoids self-righteousness with genuine reverence for the natural world. Whether paying tribute to his favorite arborous giant on “The Hazelnut Tree” or straightforwardly lamenting natural disasters on “To Be American”, Kahane recognizes that the physical world as exists in front of us is changing rapidly independent of any individual’s actions. He can, however, better himself by recognizing his faults. On the stunning title track, he admits to feelings of professional jealousy and explicitly references his Internet-less year as a means to avoid feeling envious. If the rest of us were spared from in-person FOMO during the pandemic, Kahane spared himself from, well, almost everything, and he’s critical of himself for doing so.

Magnificent Bird ends with “Sit Shiva”, which references one of the few times Kahane bent the rules, to attend a virtual shiva for his maternal grandmother. Over swirling electric guitars and synthesizers, acoustic guitars from Foubert, and backing vocals from Elizabeth Ziman, Kahane tries to make sense of something so absurd. “My mother, describing her mother / Fought back tears, it’s weird, I thought, / The intimacy of seeing someone try / Not to cry in close-up on a screen.” The interplay between the tangible sight of a tear and the virtual barrier of a screen has likely mucked up the emotions of similar experiences for a lot of other folks throughout the pandemic. You can’t help but think of folks who weren’t able to say goodbye to their loved ones in person because of overcrowded hospitals with contagious COVID patients. The image of a virtual shiva, Kahane unable to fully understand the experience but rolling with the punches, is a microcosm of what Kahane refers to as an “ethic of love.” While the idea comes from the Civil Rights Movement and leaders like Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. persisting in the face of those who didn’t recognize their basic humanity, Kahane uses it to adopt a semblance of empathy, whether on a days-long train trip with total strangers or interacting via screens with loved ones.

Read the rest of my conversation with Kahane below, edited for length and clarity. Catch him at Constellation on May 21st.

Since I Left You: When I first listened to Magnificent Bird, what immediately stood out to me was that it was pretty short in terms of runtime, and each song was like a vignette. Were you going for that feel?

Gabriel Kahane: I can’t say I was going for that, but...there was more stream of consciousness in the lyric-writing, which is something that interests me. In a weird way, some of these songs have more of a journey, even though they’re really short, than some songs I’ve written in the past that drop you into a moment and evoke a mood or a feeling. On earlier records, I’m using the three-minute song to tell a story that has a certain amount of plot. In these songs, there’s often some kind of psychological movement that happens where I start in one place and end up somewhere else. I think that’s a function of the diaristic writing process and coaxing these free-writes into lyrics.

These songs are definitely vignettes of my life here, and the world creeps in along the edges. There was also a deliberate attempt to reset after writing a big orchestral piece--emergency shelter intake form, a deep dive into inequality through housing issues and homelessness--around the release of my last record. I was running the risk of being pigeonholed as the “issues, ideological composer guy” but also feeling that there’s a real danger in the notion that beauty for beauty’s sake is a luxury or a privilege, when in fact, I think quite the opposite. That notion is kind of classist. There’s a great essay by the poet and feminist Audrey Lorde called Poetry is Not a Luxury that I had been thinking about a lot in terms of who has access to what kind of art. In a time as divided as the one that we’re living in, we’re so often closed off to each other’s experience, it feels like there’s something kind of radical and quite political in reaching someone’s heart. There’s a weird way in which the movement towards writing about domestic life, which seems anti-political, feels really political to me.

SILY: I’m reminded of the New York Times going into Midwest diners trying to find real America. It’s through such an Internet lens, whereas your project seems more genuine.

GK: It’s funny you mention that, because that sort of “man in the street,” the journalistic nickname for that kind of reporting of, “Let’s go into the diner and interview people” is kind of what was happening with [Book of Travelers] and the election in 2016. This is the antithesis of that.

SILY: You write on Magnificent Bird about learning about news through the newspaper, without the immediacy of the Internet. I read that you still don’t really use your smartphone. What do you still use the Internet for, and what do you not use it for that you used to use it for?

GK: The biggest practical shift is that I got rid of my smartphone. That was partly out of self-preservation, because I was pretty addicted to it, and some of those addictive tendencies have returned. I’m posting very little to social media--maybe once or twice a month--but I’m still looking at it, which actually feels worse. I feel like I need to be completely off of it or give in. I’m still mostly getting my news from the newspaper and radio. One of the big things I was reminded of in my time offline was that even the 24-hour news cycle is a construct. We talked about the Twitter news cycle being fake and constantly self-correcting as things that are reported turn out to be untrue. But as my news intake slowed down to at least once a day, I started to see what was being reported on a 24-hour cycle was even different [than the day before], particularly during the final year of the Trump administration. There was a lot of palace intrigue, stuff that’s not really worth anyone’s time to read about. Nothing to do with policy or the quality of anyone’s life, just salacious reporting about the disrepair and disfunction. There is a whole kind of genre of journalism that’s, “Let’s take you behind the scenes of what’s happening in Washington,” and I now have very little tolerance for that.

The signal moment for me in thinking about the news specifically was that I didn’t look at any online news for the first 10 months of my time offline, and the first time that I broke my rule--there were moments throughout where I broke the rules or bent the rules for various reasons where I felt like I didn’t have another option--was when there were horrific wildfires within 30 miles of Portland. I started looking at the local news online to look at the air quality and whether the fires were going to burn our house down. What was humbling about that was, in retrospect, how much I obsessively kept up with news that had very little impact on my life. I was reading it as much as entertainment even though I was telling myself for a long time that it was a sort of activism, even though it was just armchair activism, so not activism at all. That was a big shift for me in recognizing the advantages that I have in my life culturally and economically have made it such that I’ve often been at a remove from the most destructive things government is doing because they don’t have an impact on me. They obviously have an impact on people I care about, like everyone.

The other big shift, which was more psychological than having to do with specific technologies, was realizing that when I had a smartphone, I always felt like I had to be taking something in. I was always in input mode, listening to a podcast or the record or the news. Less and less was I able to just be with my thoughts and imagination. It took several months of being offline to realize I was trying to do that even when off the Internet, trying to find ways to constantly feed myself information. Even with reading, I realized I needed to spend some time not taking things in. We’re conditioned because there’s such a glut of information, and all these different companies and interests trying to buy a slice of our attention, to resist that is a project unto itself.

SILY: Like when you sing on “The Hazelnut Tree”, “The sun on the hazelnut tree / That’s something I still believe.”

GK: That was the first song I wrote for this project, on October 1st. There’s also a line in that song, “That’s more information than I need.” There’s also something going on there, feeling like information overload. In one way, it’s a privilege to step back from that, but in another sense, part of what plagues American politics is that a huge swath of the electorate is working 80 hours a week for basically slave wages and can’t pay attention to the news because they’re trying to make ends meet. I was never tuning things out. I’m inherently too interested in the world and the idea of democracy that I would never be able to check out. But there’s a question of how granular you have to get in the degree to which you’re paying attention in order to be an informed citizen.

SILY: I like the line on “To Be American”, “One criminal’s soft defeat can’t change the fact that we’re broken.” Are you basically saying, “Trump being removed isn’t going to fix everything?”

GK: It’s funny because I wrote that song in the second week of October. The reason I took the train trip after the election in 2016 is the feeling that Trump was more a symptom of systemic rot in the country than the problem. There are so many ways of talking about that. The challenges that we face are so much greater. Obviously, one person can do a huge amount of damage to the public trust, but his genius was tapping into a real kind of rage and twisting it in the ugliest possible direction. He’s not the only aspiring authoritarian: We’re seeing it all around Europe and in Brazil.

I really try to not editorialize in my song, and that line is a little bit where I’m editorializing a bit. [laughs] My reading that sounds a little Hallmarky is that there’s not a lot of love in our politics and in our organizing right now. I spent a good amount of time when I was offline reading work by the leaders of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and one of the things I find the most moving and inspiring about people like Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Audrey Lorde later is how committed they were to an ethic of love in the space of people who didn’t recognize their basic humanity. That song is both about nostalgia and critical of nostalgia. And with that line, we can see quite clearly that a year and a half later, we’re mired in a certain set of problems, and some have certainly continued.

SILY: On the opening track “We Are the Saints”, when you sing, “It’s mourning in America,” I noticed on the lyrics sheet it was spelled “m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g.” Were you trying to be ambiguous? It’s very likely folks listening won’t have the lyrics sheet.

GK: “Morning in America” was a Reagan slogan. If you hear it as “morning,” it’s deeply ironic, the Reagan callback but with a sneer. So it can be either way. Does the Reagan version of that phrase have any resonance for you? I weirdly know that phrase because it was referenced in a musical I worked on when I was in my 20s, and then I went back and watched the Reagan commercials.

SILY: I know the context, and as much as political ads are inherently cringeworthy, for someone like Reagan whose policies were so cruel, that slogan is especially vomit-inducing.

GK: [laughs] But yes, ambiguity is baked into it on purpose.

SILY: There’s further irony on the album, like that you spent a year off the Internet but it was made with the help of the Internet, as you were able to collaborate digitally. Track 2, “Hot Pink Raingear”, is one where I listened to it and thought, “This sounds like everybody’s in the room together.” On a lot of records made over the pandemic that were made remotely, the artists seemed to lean into the digital collaboration, whereas others were trying to still make it sound like it was recorded live. Where were you on that spectrum?

GK: The paradox of making a record with all these people is that I planned to make a really sparse record. For the first time living out here in Portland, I put together a modest recording studio in my backyard, what had previously been a woodshop, with a piano and some microphones. I had planned to record more of the 30 songs, and there are some I recorded but left off the record, but it focused around these 10 songs that felt like they had an arc to them. Initially, my thinking was that I would bring in one person per song and feature one friend/collaborator. I realized afterwards that everyone who I asked to play on the record was someone I really loved as a person. Even though I was talking on the phone offline, it became really isolating as the pandemic began, both because of lockdown but also because everyone was so online all the time, that people were too exhausted to talk on the phone. I spent a lot of time looking inward, meditative, and alone. When I was done, making this record was a good excuse to be in touch with my friends, some of whom can be hard to pin down. I guess I was trying to make it feel as natural as possible.

It’s funny you mention “Hot Pink Raingear”, because I think we made three versions of it with totally different arrangements and instrumentation. It was the last piece of the puzzle to figure out. It’s the most tortured song. It makes me happy that to you it sounded like people in a room. Ted Poor, one of the two drummers on the song, had a lot to do with it. He has an amazing way of playing around a click track. One of the things that can make recording remotely very frustrating is the dominance of the click track, and it can suck the life out of things. Ted has this way of ignoring the click track, being very much in time but also playing around it. There’s something about the energy of his drumming that’s very wonderful. My friend Casey, an amazing multi-instrumentalist who has played on every one of my records and actually lives in Galesburg, Illinois, figured out a different drum idea for the chorus. That track is mostly Ted and Casey and me playing everything.

It never would have occurred to me to lean into sounding remote, and none of the mixing does so. If one were to come away with that impression, it’s not on purpose. [laughs] The first and fifth song [“Chemex”] are the ones that are basically just me, and those are very much studio jams of me trying to create a world by myself. Everything else is some version of trying to emulate people in a room.

SILY: Is the record meant to be listened to on vinyl?

GK: Yeah. I guess I started maybe two records ago, with The Ambassador in 2014, [thinking about] the experience of each side. I’d say yes in the sense that this album more than any other I’ve made feels like every song is in a really particular place. I wouldn’t want people to listen to it on shuffle. I think because it’s a short record, I love the idea of people listening to it twice in a row. I do feel like the end of “Chemex” really feels like the end of the first side, and I was thinking about introducing the little bit of electronic texture as a way to prime the listener’s ear for the beginning of the second side [“Linda & Stuart”], which is a very different sonic world. In that sense, I love the idea of someone getting to the end of the first side and thinking, “I wonder what’s gonna happen now?” and then flipping it and saying, “Okay, we’re over here.” What’s the question or observation behind the question?

SILY: Just that the liner notes said “Side A/Side B” and that the track order started over in them.

GK: That’s a convention with my label, not an artistic choice. [laughs]

SILY: In the song “Linda & Stuart”, I’m curious about the line, “Linda tells me she’s taking a writing class / On the art of the short story, and I say, ‘Hey that’s great, ’cause / We all need a way to make sense of the world.’” Is that in a way the summary of the entire record?

GK: I think that’s for you to decide. [laughs] I will leave it at that. You’re my first interview on this album cycle, and I’m usually much cagier about lyrics. I’ve said more to you in your questions about lyrics than I normally do. My usual stock response is, “What do you think?” [laughs] The problem with an artist telling you what they think a lyric is about is it deprives you of your ability to make your own meaning or makes your own meaning compete with the artists’. I leave you to decide whether that’s the thesis statement of the album.

SILY: I think it is.

GK: To take a step back, it’s so important for the world that we have people who care about music enough to write about it, and I really believe in people who care about music enough to write about it to have autonomy. I also feel like once I’ve made something, it’s not mine anymore. I truly believe that the meaning you make around something is the relationship you have with it as a listener. I don’t know if I would have thought of that reading, but I really like it. [laughs]

SILY: When did you decide to name the record after the title track?

GK: That came very late. There were a couple different titles floating around, and I thought [Magnificent Bird] sounded good as a title. I feel like that song is perhaps the song I’ve written where I, as the narrator, come across in the least flattering light. On the one hand, professional jealousy is a common experience, but on the other hand, it’s an ugly feeling. The transparency of that speaks to what I was trying to achieve with the record. It’s also the only song on the record that explicitly alludes to my time offline.

SILY: You talk about how you’re partaking in your Internet-less year in order to avoid the shame of envy. It’s a very self-reflexive and self-critical part of the album.

GK: The thing that I like about that song is that it comes around to this place of generosity of spirit, putting a record on and trying to sing along to it. In a way, it connects back to the ethic of love and generosity, something I’ve struggled with myself but am always striving to be greater at. In that song, the narrator is both engaging in a shameful feeling of jealousy and coming out the other end in a slightly better place.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

GK: John Gall is a really great book designer, the head of designer for [The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group]. He’s done lots of covers for Nonesuch going back about two decades. I love to read, and I love book covers. The last three records I made have had these really brooding covers, and the last two were these full-bleed, emotionally dark photographs. He and I had one conversation, and I said I was interested in something with an inset and a collage--he does a lot of collage-based work in his book design--and as a reader and wannabe literary guy, I kind of like that the cover feels adjacent to a book cover as much as a record cover. I don’t want to be too specific. He’s left a lot of Easter eggs in the cover art, and I’ll leave them there for listeners to decide what’s happening.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

GK: There’s a book I’ve been proselytizing everywhere I can called How To Blow Up A Pipeline by historian and activist Andreas Malm, a short and interesting book about the limitations of nonviolent action. He’s not necessarily advocating that people blow up pipelines, but looking at what other nonviolent movements have used to get their agenda past the finish line, from Civil Rights to Women’s Suffrage. The Gift by Lewis Hyde has really rocked my world. It was initially published in 1983 and was for me a life-changing book about how to be creative and hold on to the center of your practice while living in capitalism, something I’ve been thinking about over the past year. My decision to go offline had a lot to do with feeling like so much of our digital world is the most distilled expression of capitalism. If the point of capitalism is to take friction out of transactions, the smartphone is the ultimate frictionless device, whether we’re communicating, buying stuff, or selling stuff. I’ve increasingly found myself uncomfortable with that premise. The Gift was a really helpful way for me to orient myself, because it’s hard to resist desire and wanting to be famous. It’s kind of what’s going on in the title track, working through that stuff.

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holycowbrowniekitty · 4 years

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Norwegian Ingrid is imprisoned in Japan for a crime she did not commit

Original text in Norwegian by Stian Smakic Sopp was published with the consent of the family. It has been slightly modified during translation to fit this format.Stian has now provided with his own translation in the original post: https://www.facebook.com/soppp/posts/10162553924190366

Norwegian student Ingrid from Ålgård in Rogaland was arrested by the Japanese authorities and is currently in detention for crimes she has not committed, without any incriminating proof against her case, and under brutal conditions that are human rights violating.

Her friend “Alexandra” was also put under similar conditions, but has been released. “Alexandra” describes her experiences as torture and highly traumatizing.

Ingrid is a master student of Global Environment Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. Ingrid is a good-hearted girl who loves people, animals and the environment, and she loves Japan. She has a pet parakeet and insects who means the world to her, and is currently writing her master’s thesis about the importance of the insects in our environment. She is not one to be sarcastic, as she worries about hurting people’s feelings, but she has the brightest smile. Ingrid also has autism.

Please donate if you can! For those who don’t know, the justice system in Japan is terrible and abusive, especially to those who are deemed “smugglers”.

More information on the actual events + the system beneath the cut.

What happened?

March 2019

Ingrid reached out to Association of Norwegian Students Abroad (hereby; ANSA) and asked if she could meet a representative to talk. I (author Stian) met Ingrid, and we had lunch together and stayed in touch with her frequently on Facebook from this point on. Ingrid told me she wanted to expand her network and get more friends. I gave her a list of organizations, clubs and networks I deemed it positive for her to be a part of, as well as encouraging her to join in on ANSA events so we could stay in touch. Ingrid joined these events from this point on. My wish was for her to join as a board member, but she doubted her capabilities for such a task. I told her that in ANSA we all support each other, and that there would never be a task we couldn’t conquer together.

8th November 2019

ANSA’s board meeting is held, and Ingrid is elected as a board member. In the following days a meeting to get to know each other is planned and decided through a poll in our private Facebook group.

22nd November 2019

The first board meeting is held, but Ingrid never showed. She had not been a part of the discussion in the previous days, and no one heard anything from her in the following days either. I thought she might have pulled back because the responsibilities seemed overwhelming on her, and I decided to give her a few days before I messaged her again to give her some space.

26th November 2019

I woke up to se a long message on my screen from a person not in my Facebook-contacts, but I recognized the surname. It was the same as Ingrid’s. In the message, it said that Ingrid had been arrested by the police.

Ingrid has a friend in Japan, “Alexandra”.

April 2019

A parcel for “Alexandra” from abroad reaches the Japanese customs. They claimed it contained marijuana. Neither the parcel nor information about it has been passed on to us at this point.

Shortly after this, “Alexandra” travels to her home country on a vacation. She was still not stopped by the authorities at this point.

12th November 2019

“Alexandra” returns to Japan. When she arrives at the airport she is arrested, and she describes the conditions as brutal and ruthless, and claims the authorities destroyed most of her possessions when they ransacked her bags. They found nothing, but they still sent her to detention.

She describes the conditions during her detention as follows:

The cell was about 6m2 in total, where they would keep up to four people at the same time. It was so cold that the only way they could stay warm was by walking around in the room. She lost 5,5kg during this period. She was allowed to shower once every five days. You slept on the floor. Wakeup-time was at 6:00am.

Every time there was a questioning, she was dragged by two policemen who each had a strap that was fastened in a belt “Alexandra” had to wear into the interrogation room, and if she could not keep up with them, they would pull the straps so hard that she would be pained by it.

The questionings happened up to three times a day, where each session would last several hours on end. The belt, which “Alexandra” describes as a torture device, was tightened so hard that she had troubles breathing. With what little breath she had, she told the officers interrogating her that the belt was fastened too tightly and that she couldn’t breathe, where the response was “too bad for you” or a similarly, as they fastened the belt even more if they felt like it. She was handcuffed so tightly she got cuts on her hands.

Verbal humiliation was also practiced.

At times she was also locked inside a small box she describes as claustrophobic and especially traumatizing.

If the detainees screamed in pain or cried, they would be put in solitary confinement.

After her release, the smell of the detergent used on the prison clothes gives her such a strong reaction that she vomits.

The authorities confiscated her phone and computer. There was never found any transaction log, communication log, order log or anything else that could be related to a parcel from the USA containing narcotic drugs.

20th November 2019

After 8 days of detention, “Alexandra” is released after receiving threats from the police about telling about her experiences in their detention. The same day, Ingrid is arrested.

22nd November 2019

The family is informed about the arrest by the Norwegian Embassy

26th November 2019

I am informed by Ingrid’s sister about her situation

29th November 2019

The authorities decided to hold Ingrid for another 10 days

Because of the legal and formal restrictions, we have not been allowed to publish this sooner. Through Ingrid’s lawyer, we have been told that Ingrid is crying a lot, but no more than that, even if we ask. Her family has expressed that she absolutely is not capable of going through such an experience given her mental state, and it has a potential of inflicting her with irreversible damage.

Japanese police and justice system has been criticized for years for being very corrupt, for it’s irresponsible practice and for systematically violating the human rights. These complaints come from human rights organizations, activists, law professors, radio and TV stations, researchers, psychologists, doctors, newspapers, previous convicts who have later been proven innocent and those previously employed in the police force and justice system.

Japan claims to solve 99,9% of all criminal cases, something they are very proud of. However, the system never admits fault and system errors. The most common practice in the system is “Forced Confession”, where they force the detained to confess to have committed the crime they are accused for. The more one denies, the more and harder one will get punished.

If the police are unsuccessful in this, they will prolong the detention, something they can do in up to 23 days even without evidence, before they will have to release you if they don’t have any proof.

When you are released, it is common practice that the police will immediately detain you once more, and accuse you with something similar. For example, if you were first accused for “import of drugs”, the next on might be “participation in import of drugs”, the third “national threat of dangerous expressions related to drugs” and so on. They do not need any evidence to do this. Usually, this goes on until the detained breaks during questioning and admits to crimes they didn’t commit, just to escape from the torturous environment. This confession is brought to court, where the accused get their judgement. There is no need for evidence as this point to convict you of this crime.

For every criminal case in Japan, typically at least one person will always be charged. This is to “resolve” the case.

What we know about Ingrid at this point is that she is not allowed to communicate with anyone but her lawyer. This lawyer was appointed to her by the police that detained her. According a European translator who has worked as a translator during several Japanese questionings, these lawyers are often without experience regarding criminal law. They are used purely symbolically to say you are allowed to have a lawyer, but in practice they have little to no influence as criminal defense lawyers, and are in several cases influenced by the police.

Normal practice at Japanese workplaces are preferably to follow the system without asking questions. In this case, with the police, an authoritarian hierarchy with physical, verbal and mental harassment is normalized and allowed if the orders come from the higher ups, and the public are held out of the know.

Furthermore, when you’re in a Japanese prison, it doesn’t matter if you have been convicted of something you committed or not. You are treated without respect, and under extreme conditions.

To this point, there has not been found any evidence to testify that Ingrid imported drugs to Japan. But because there are only two people involved in the case and the police are prolonging her detention, there is a possibility Ingrid will become the one the police intend to charge in this case.

Questions you might have at this point:

Isn’t Japan a civilized and developed country with high standards?

With all due respect to Japan and it’s population, this sadly is not the case on certain points. Crimes are statistically low, mainly because most criminal activity happens in the underground between gangs, and not to civilians in public. But innocent people are convicted every day here, and sadly Japan operates with systems that are technologically outdated, and an abuse of power. Our communication with Ingrid is exclusively through the lawyer that relays our messages to the police, which is only available through fax. E-mail and phone conversations are not available.

The Japanese justice system operates exclusively with judges and never with a jury. The mentality is to get a case solved as quick as possible, without much consideration to the justice. Judges are promoted based on how quick they can solve cases, without regard for the quality. This pressure creates and illusion that every case is investigated and solved correctly.

How serious is this?

Of all things, a drug conviction is one of the things Japan is the strictest about. The penalty is high for little, and if a case is first created, even if there was never any evidence from the start, practice is that at least one is convicted.

Can’t Foreign Affairs or the Embassy do something?

No. The police are legally responsible for Ingrid, so neither embassy nor any other organization can do anything legally. The Embassy can first open diplomatic negotiations when a person is convicted. However, there is no guarantee these will succeed, and Ingrid can risk several years of imprisonment for a crime she never committed. As of current, me and the family are in dialogue with the Norwegian embassy.

How can we know she is not guilty of what she’s been charged for?

Ingrid’s test results for drugs have not tested positively. No log exist that can verify any order, communication or anything else that indicate any request of such a package. The only “evidence” the police has is a parcel they claim was sent to “Alexandra”, even without her request to have it sent. Ingrid is detained for being a friend of “Alexandra”. ¨

Ingrid does not consume alcohol, tobacco, nicotine or narcotics, and has never done this previously. She has never had any friends or contacts within any criminal networks. According to her family, she is a person that has never wanted to or been in trouble, and could never challenge the law or other organizations, whether it be formally or informally. The family also claims Ingrid takes distance from drugs and other substances such as tobacco etc. and has done so her entire life.

Personally, Ingrid is the last person who could have done something like this out of everyone I know.

Another important thing to notice is that the autism diagnosis is not very well known in the Japanese society, comparatively to the west. A large portion of the population here, professionals and non-professionals alike don’t know the diagnose and its behavioral spectrum, and Japan is even known to treat most diagnoses chemically, for example is autism often treated by “Happy Spray”.

Ingrid has a different body language from most people, for example she gets easily shy and uncomfortable when it comes to direct eye-contact. We believe this to be much of the reason the authorities are keeping her, and that they are using her as bait.

What can we do?

From the family, and for me as Ingrid’s friend, we ask you on the deepest to share this. From activists, journalists, organizations and others that have previously been involved in similar cases have we been advised two things: to acquire a good, private and independent lawyer with good knowledge on criminal justice, and publish about this in social media and the newspapers. Our hope is that Ingrid’s case can get enough attention in social media and news media, so we can bring this to Japanese media and explain that this is an important case for those of us at home, and that people from all places care about these things, and we hope they will write about this. The consequences of the Japanese media writing about this can potentially have a huge influence and result in Ingrid’s freedom. We hope to get media on our side, so the authorities will be pressured to negotiate.

We have created a crowdfunding-page to finance a lawyer to defend Ingrid, since this will cost us several thousand kroner every hour (10kr is roughly 1$ or 100yen). In this case, the family will be able to communicate with the lawyer directly in English, as the current lawyer only speaks Japanese. We wish to document where the money went in the aftermath as a testament to our gratitude, and to testify that this money was not spent on anything else.

The police and the lawyer in Japan have denied documents sent by Ingrid’s father who is a docent at University of Stavanger where he teaches purchasing and contract law, with an education in law and trade. In these documents he also refers the international purchasing law, which both the country of origin of the parcel, Norway and Japan is a part of, and the father of Ingrid deems it irresponsible to accuse two people who have no knowledge of the sending of this parcel, when the police doesn’t have any other incriminating proof. This is also a human rights violation.

I have expressed a wish to support Ingrid’s family, in hopes that my social network can help to reach out with this story to any persons, politicians, institutions and others that might be willing to help, and that we from there could give this case bigger attention. At least this is my hope.

Ingrid’s detention has been prolonged for ten more days from November 30th 2019. According to her lawyer, it is likely that this process will continue for a long time coming, where they in practice will prolong the detainment for months in sequences of 23 days (10+10+3). He further expresses that Ingrid is risking at least 5 years in prison.

Ingrid has no knowledge of that there are people on the outside working day and night to help her, since we cannot reach her and have personal information relayed. All the family wants right now is for Ingrid to be treated fairly, and for her to come home from Christmas safe and sound.

We therefore ask you humbly to share this message, and hope as many as possible will be able to crowdfund a lawyer for Ingrid. All resources will be greatly appreciated.

I have included some sources to describe the conditions told about in the text. From both Ingrid’s family and me, thank you so much for taking your time reading this!

Crowdfunding:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aprep-ingrid?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR0rVTZb3Qe0SYiG7XrovPxG0H8KZEi20UStIIlD-C3Q_-lsM0vHpQpCU9Y

Guilty until proven innocent: A documentary about the Japanese justice system and its dark side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYJpc2y37oU&fbclid=IwAR3GaGkFYltVO1D2soHQ_IIHaQnvz5AplmhcFLai4B0nnaQVcFc0hQva7Sw

Why Japan’s conviction rate is 99% | The Economist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFINmgSzK6E&t=0s&fbclid=IwAR06RgwVlOOd6vMYEtco9whVUs9bvKjMj9skUczh7vwBbJE9o50h-SVJXeA

Research articles describing the interrogation process in Japan:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282617040_Japanese_Interrogation_Techniques_From_Prisoners'_Perspectives?fbclid=IwAR05ei4olZs7fPgweIbM6xLEbWMMos4FfJpMnFGUa02XK0Om2l8Pxtk3yCE

#fundraiser #crowdfunding #help #donations #signal boost #donation post #japan #prison #weed #even the smallest of smallest donations are welcome

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