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Tokyo man responds to saddle theft ... by stealing 150+ himselfParked bikes (copyright Simon MacMichael)_

Tokyo man responds to saddle theft ... by stealing 150+ himself

Akio Hatori told police: "I wanted other people to feel what I had gone through"...
by Simon_MacMichael
Mon, Oct 07, 2019 17:29
17

A man in Japan who discovered that the saddle of his bicycle had been stolen had a rather unusual response – unable to find the thief, he amassed a collection of more than 100 saddles he had stolen himself, so that other bike owners could experience the same sense of loss he felt.

Sora News 24 reports that Akio Hatori, aged 61 and a resident of Tokyo’s Ota district, discovered his saddle had been stolen when he was heading out for a bike ride last summer.

He bought a replacement, and for most cyclists, that would have been the end of it – but not Hatori, who a couple of months later rather bizarrely set off on a saddle-stealing spree of his own.

Over the course of the past year, he built up a haul of 159 of them, in the process subjecting the cyclists who were his victims to the same emotions of anger, upset and loss that he himself felt after his bike had been targeted.

He was arrested this week by officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Kamata Precinct who were investigating the theft of a saddle in late August.

Hatori was identified through CCTV footage which showed him removing a saddle and putting it in the basket of his bike, and police discovered video of him riding around carrying other saddles in the same way.

A search of his home netted 159 saddles which police artfully lined up by colour at a press conference announcing his arrest (sadly, the YouTube video is geo-restricted and won’t play in the UK).

He told police: “I wanted other people to feel what I had gone through, and I stole the seats as a form of revenge.”

Tokyo
Japan
saddles
Simon MacMichael

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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17 comments

Avatar
Organon | 5 years ago
0 likes

But did he sniff them?

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quiff | 5 years ago
2 likes

Oops, embarrassing.

Avatar
Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Actually a more faithful translation reads, "I wanted other people to feel what had gone through me..."

Avatar
quiff replied to Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Sriracha wrote:

Actually a more faithful translation reads, "I wanted other people to feel what had gone through me..."

Depends on your approach to translation - do you translate the words, or the intended meaning. That may be a more accurate direct correspondence in English (I don't know), but it also sounds odd. If Japanese also has a more direct equivalent of "what I went through" but he deliberately chose to say "what went through me", then that's different. On an abstract level though, the idea of an emotion or state of mind passing through you rather than the other way round is quite appealing - like it's blowing in the wind, rather than our version, which is something to conquer. Sorry, I digress. What sort of saddle was it?        

Avatar
Sriracha replied to quiff | 5 years ago
2 likes
quiff wrote:

Sriracha wrote:

Actually a more faithful translation reads, "I wanted other people to feel what had gone through me..."

Depends on your approach to translation - do you translate the words, or the intended meaning. That may be a more accurate direct correspondence in English (I don't know), but it also sounds odd. If Japanese also has a more direct equivalent of "what I went through" but he deliberately chose to say "what went through me", then that's different. On an abstract level though, the idea of an emotion or state of mind passing through you rather than the other way round is quite appealing - like it's blowing in the wind, rather than our version, which is something to conquer. Sorry, I digress. What sort of saddle was it?        

Um, clearly my attempt at humour has failed. Never mind.

Avatar
shutuplegz replied to Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Sriracha wrote:
quiff wrote:

Sriracha wrote:

Actually a more faithful translation reads, "I wanted other people to feel what had gone through me..."

Depends on your approach to translation - do you translate the words, or the intended meaning. That may be a more accurate direct correspondence in English (I don't know), but it also sounds odd. If Japanese also has a more direct equivalent of "what I went through" but he deliberately chose to say "what went through me", then that's different. On an abstract level though, the idea of an emotion or state of mind passing through you rather than the other way round is quite appealing - like it's blowing in the wind, rather than our version, which is something to conquer. Sorry, I digress. What sort of saddle was it?        

Um, clearly my attempt at humour has failed. Never mind.

 

Not completely 

Avatar
hawkinspeter | 5 years ago
5 likes

I'm glad they caught him. For a while, the bicycle police said they had nothing to go on.

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Sriracha replied to hawkinspeter | 5 years ago
1 like
hawkinspeter wrote:

I'm glad they caught him. For a while, the bicycle police said they had nothing to go on.

And they say the perp's family refused to raise his bail. He had to stump up himself in the end.

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Boatsie replied to Sriracha | 5 years ago
0 likes
Sriracha wrote:
hawkinspeter wrote:

I'm glad they caught him. For a while, the bicycle police said they had nothing to go on.

And they say the perp's family refused to raise his bail. He had to stump up himself in the end.

1
The victims were over Lee cranky and not well rested.

Loving inefficiency here during windward.

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cdamian | 5 years ago
0 likes

I always wondered what happened to all the stolen saddles.

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mingmong | 5 years ago
1 like

That's proper unseated behaviour

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Robert Hardy | 5 years ago
0 likes

Let's hope this man never feels suicidal!

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ConcordeCX | 5 years ago
1 like

Why does he think everybody would feel the same way as he did? Some of them might have thought, great now i can get a decent one on the insurance, or My late grandfather made that saddle by hand from the hide of my pet kangaroo, I will therefore go on a killing spree.

 

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billymansell | 5 years ago
1 like

That's taking saddle sore to a new level.

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ktache | 5 years ago
1 like

I have been hit by multiple motor vehicles, the driver’s fault, of course, mostly not looking/being bothered, and I don't drive so that I can never make a cyclist go through the terror and pain that I have gone through.

Now what this bloke has done is like those who close pass me, and then when confronted with criticism of their awful driving, attempt to explain "I know, I'm a cyclist too."

 

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hobbeldehoy | 5 years ago
1 like

Stories about the Japanese being so honest you could leave an item on the pavement and return hours later to find it untouched are yet another urban myth. I guess petty crime goes on there as it does anywhere else.

Avatar
Rick_Rude | 5 years ago
2 likes

150 wrongs don't make a right.

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