Minnie Osmena, pictured right, doesn't come out well from that Vanity Fair piece, which is quite something when you have been the victim of an assault.

Muscle memory...

She's assaulted several people over the years. She did a few weeks jail time for her attack on Minnie Osmena.

It's not a secret but no one in media ever seems to bring it up. It's unclear whether that's out of respect for Kanase and her family, a desire not to annoy Dewi Fujin, or general lack of interest.

The tragic part which often get missed out is that Sukarno first married Sakiko Kanase, the leading hostess at the Akasaka club Dewi worked at. When Sukarno went on to prefer Dewi, Kanase took her own life.

So, as mentioned in relation to the incident last year, any indictment will count as a foreign criminal case, because Dewi Sukarno still does not have Japanese citizenship. bsky.app/profile/mulb...

If this sounds familiar, there was a similar incident last April. It derailed Sukarno's effort to enter an animal rights political party into the election. Sukarno needed to naturalize to stand in the election but the case undermined her application. bsky.app/profile/mulb...

Incidentally, foreign residents of a certain vintage may think the bathhouse case cited in the article sounds familiar. The lawyer is referring to the Otaru case, which was partly initiated, and heavily publicized, by Arudou Debito over 20 years ago.

The lawyer's opinion is that a blanket ban on Chinese customers would be almost impossible to justify. As it stands, the Osaka ramen operator stopped short of taking such a measure, citing legal issues, so he probably received the same advice.

At the same time, a blanket ban on one nationality would likely not seem rational to a court. Even claiming "Chinese people cause trouble" would raise questions of how much trouble compared with others, and how nationality was ascertained by the owner.

There is a case where a public bathhouse (公衆浴場) was deemed to have discriminated by banning a foreigner on grounds of nationality. The lawyer says private businesses like restaurants, though aimed at the public, are given more latitude when deciding who to allow in.

The ramen shop got complaints about the double pricing, particularly from Chinese customers. In response, the owner said he would ban Chinese from his restaurant. This throws up a separate legal issue.

To be absolutely safe, the lawyer says, the owners could explain on the English menu how prices were higher to cover a supposed increased service burden. Of course, this would alert anyone reading, that it would be cheaper to order off the Japanese menu.

There is a consumer protection law (景品表示法) which applies when, say, a firm offers 50% off, without ever having charged the higher price. However, in this case, the higher foreign language price is not aimed at making the Japanese price look like a false bargain.

Sounds like an Earl Norman book

Tokyu Hands old management didn't consider those retailers to be direct competition as they had niches the other retailers didn't serve. However, they took sales from mainstream product lines, squeezed Hands' margins, which ended up undermining those niches.

Those stores weren't reall around when Tokyu Hands started. The competition really kicked in at the turn of the century, and Tokyu Hands kept trying to be a premium service without offering a premium experience.