The lecture "Outlaws of the Frontier: Southeast Asia's Scam Zones Today," held on Sunday, May 17, at Ichijo Hall on the University of Tokyo's Yayoi Campus, was a full house, with many people standing. It was the first time Minetoshi Yasuda and Hideyuki Takano had appeared on the same stage. Mr. Yasuda, who has followed the Chinese underground world, and Mr. Takano, who has walked the frontiers of the world, starting with northern Myanmar, talked for 120 minutes on the theme of Southeast Asia's scam compounds.

Although the theme was a serious social one dealing with post-coup Myanmar, the hall often broke into edgy laughter. I think it was an occasion only these two could create, dealing with grim realities while speaking with ease and humor.

Particularly worth hearing were their accounts of how each of them reports on the ground and how they have built relationships of trust in the field. They shared the etiquette and the instincts of fieldwork that only writers who have entered places ordinary reporters can rarely reach, and drawn out people's stories, could speak of.

What stood out on this theme was a point made by Mr. Takano. Unlike narcotics, the scam compounds do not eat away at local residents through drug addiction. So compared with the drug economy, they are in some respects seen by local people as the lesser evil. The ones who suffer are the people in developed countries who get scammed; the local people are not much troubled. That is why the compounds will not easily disappear.

As long as this asymmetry exists between the victims and the locality, saying from outside that they "must be eliminated" will not create any motivation from within. Those 120 minutes confronted the packed hall with why the scam compounds persist so stubbornly, and why they are so hard to eradicate.