Ron McLean is a hangover from another era, an aging hippie who still does his hair in a graying pony-tail nearly a decade after he first carried placards and shouted slogans denouncing Japan's support for U.S. policy in Vietnam. For the past eight years of his existence in Japan, though, McLean waged a different kind of crusade—this one against an official ruling that finally forced him to leave the country and return to Hawaii to pursue his academic interest in classical Japanese music.

“The government of most countries is intended to protect the rights of the individual,” he said with the didactic air of one who has just discovered a basic truth. “In Japan it's to protect the government.” He was talking in the half light of one of those glittering little coffee shops that purvey a small cup for the equivalent of nearly two dollars and a piece of cake for twice as much.