Pity the poor neighbor; but we’re all neighbors, and all at the mercy of our neighbors – the not-too-tender mercies, as Josei Seven (Feb 12) makes clear in an article whose title says it all: “Monster Neighbors.”

Once upon a time, antiquarians assure us, community ties were firm and neighbors lived at peace with each other. Not only that, they helped each other out, not grudgingly but gladly. Life was hard, but neighborliness smoothed the rough edges. No longer. Now our neighbors are strangers more often than friends – and strangers at close quarters get on each others' nerves. Unbearably, sometimes.

A survey in 2013 by the Japan Consumers’ Cooperative Union of 1,000 men and women aged 20-59 revealed a litany of complaints: noise (a nuisance to 21.9% of respondents), garbage (21.5%), parking space hogging (15.1%), and so on – trivial stuff, but trivialities accumulate until your nerves are ready to snap. How out of control this can get was shown in October 2012, when an 86-year-old man in Setagaya, Tokyo, stabbed his 62-year-old neighbor to death. Why? Because her flower pots got in his way.

Josei Seven offers three pages full of pent-up resentment. A 49-year-old woman had lived happily in a Fukuoka apartment building. Then, six months ago, a new neighbor moved in. With a dog ... a big dog that barked incessantly.

She put up with it for a while, then went to the building superintendant – who did nothing. So she recorded the dog’s barking and confronted the neighbor, one on one. She played the tape. The neighbor listened, winced, gritted her teeth, and acknowledged – grudgingly – the justice of the complaint. She got rid of the dog. Problem solved. Yes, but now the neighbor is permanently resentful. She’d loved the dog. The complainant has her peace and quiet, but can’t help feeling a little guilty.

Then there’s the outdoor smoker. His wife just had a baby and doesn’t allow smoking in the house. So he smokes outside. He means no harm, but at least one of his neighbors, a 53-year-old woman, suddenly finds her house reeking of tobacco. She addressed the man’s mother, a friendly woman who immediately apologized and promised to speak to her son. Which she did – only to arouse the wrath of her daughter-in-law, whose venom with regard to the complainant knows no bounds. She hollers at the top of her lungs so that the whole neighborhood hears, “She wants us to smoke in the house, doesn’t care what it does to the baby’s lungs!”

Two neighbors in Kanagawa Prefecture had been friendly for years. They were pregnant at the same time, their daughters were born around the same time, and then the children became best friends, drawing the mothers even closer. This was neighborliness in the old style. But around grade four one of the girls found another best friend, and the hurt feelings of the other girl were passed on to her mother, who promptly launched a smear campaign: “That child is a troublemaker, she makes messes and doesn’t clean up, she’s badly brought up” – and so on. This sort of thing, spread about a neighborhood, can be acutely embarrassing. The last straw was when the girl who had found another best friend began attending a more exclusive juku (cram school) than the other family could afford. “Look at them climbing up the social ladder!” the offended mother sneered – publicly. What can you do? You shake your head and bear it.

What to choose for a closing anecdote? It’s a tough decision, but how about this one of the budding piano genius. She practices endlessly – morning, noon and night. Genius she may be, but not all neighbors within earshot are music-lovers, or love having their sleep cut into and their waking hours set to music. Finally, one 60-year-old neighbor took courage and spoke up to the girl’s mother – who, huffily, replied, “You don’t know how fortunate you are! The girl is a brilliant artist!”

The matter ended there, with no court of appeal in sight. Think what a fool you'd feel, calling police to report a genius disturbing the peace.

© Japan Today