A measure of safety

For the foreign resident, Japan is a country almost without crime. For the native it is getting more dangerous by the day. Who is right? KS takes the law into its own hands and investigates crime.

Up until that hideous moment when it finally isn't, violent crime is - much like life's other great tragedies - always something that happens to Someone Else. While 22-year-old English teacher Linsday Ann Hawker was still Someone Else to a great many people outside the Tokyo-area school and neighborhood she worked in, her death last March, at the hands of an (as of this writing) unapprehended killer was particularly jarring for Japan's foreign community. Her death, after all - suspected at the hands of Tatsuya Ichihashi, whose dead-eyed visage can be seen on wanted posters nationwide - cruelly hammered two very common schools of thought: 1) That nothing much bad happens in Japan; and 2) That no one really messes with foreigners, anyway.

The former has been a popular item for quite some time; as it goes, a reputation for safety, security and politeness isn't the worst thing to have when coaxing visitors from overseas - and Japan's is, and remains, one of the best reputations of all.

At first, it is easy enough to understand why: no police helicopters flying overhead; no cop car chases, televised or otherwise; little sight of howling suspects, handcuffed on the ground or thrown against police cruisers; women travelling alone, even late at night; sleeping train passengers, unconcerned about bags and wallets.

After that, however, come the stories on the evening news shows, and the whispers from Japanese acquaintances insisting that, while the country certainly used to be like that, Times Have Changed, and Now - only now - Japan has become a Dangerous Place. You heard that story, right? About that boy killing his sister? Can't believe that girl murdered her mother like that. And that man - killed his entire family and then committed suicide; debts, I heard. Did you know the mayor of Nagasaki was shot to death? That poor little girl, stabbed right next to her house … And on and on. While no one is certainly ready to call Japan a nation under siege, it's well worth wondering how much of the "safe" reputation is truly deserved, particularly after it's clearly begun to lose a bit of its sheen.

Just as popular mythmaking has made the American "Wild" West out to be far more wild than it actually was (lots of places required that people disarm before they came into town, remember), the Japan of the past - for all the idyllic talk of wa (harmony) and peacefulness - was perhaps less safe than is casually remembered. Setting aside the innumerable civil wars and bloody campaigns against Christianity and the like, history, lore and popular culture are replete with the brawling, banditry, theft, rapes and murders that life in pre-Meiji era Japan was sometimes noted for. (The venerated bushido spirit was not immune, as well; history speaks, unkindly, of less-disciplined samurai infamous for taking steel to peasants who failed to grovel quite enough as they passed by.)

Fast-forward to the present, which sees many of the old threats in familiar form. Modern yakuza clans like the Yamaguchi-gumi may not be a parti- cularly big problem for the low-level Joe Salaryman, but stick-wielding chimpira punks, looking for an easy robbery, sometimes are. Sexual harassment, and sometimes far worse, await women who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong type of person; last year offered several stark reminders that children, monstrously, are prime targets for deranged men and women who catch them out of view of watchful parents.

"I think we have to take into consideration the sensationalism of the profit-oriented news media," said Stewart Wachs, Kyoto Journal associate editor and Professor of British and American Studies at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. "That said, I will add that the number of clearly mentally ill people one sees on streets and in public transport has noticeably increased, and given the types of sense- less attacks on strangers nowadays being reported in the papers, I'm a wee bit more cautious in public than I used to be.

"But," Wachs added, "I still feel far safer in public here than I do in LA."

Other long-term residents echo similar sentiments. "I haven't noticed any major changes [in Japan's crime rate], but it might have become a little more unsafe," said Bukkyo University philosophy Professor Robert L Latta. "There was a burglary scare in my neighborhood a few years ago, and the bousouzoku [roving, extremely loud motorcycle gangs] can be a little intimidating.

"I often ride a bicycle from Kita-ku in Kyoto to the Kobe area, or the other way, late at night, through built-up and utterly deserted, unlighted areas, and never feel unsafe," Latta continued. "It's incomparably safer than the US, where occasionally I heard gunshots."

Additionally, most accept that whatever Japan's level of danger, it's simply nothing compared to the way things are (or, at least, are perceived to be) Back Home. "Certainly, the Japanese media seem to be increasingly concentrating on coverage of crime, particularly the occasional high-profile heinous murders, but I'm skeptical of how widespread street crime actually is, or whether the tide is truly rising." Wachs said. "Here in Japan the many people I know very seldom relate to me anecdotes of actual crimes - especially serious or violent ones - of which either they or others whom they know have been the victim. By contrast, in [my home state of] California, that used to happen fairly often. I think corporate crime may be increasing, but I doubt whether street crime is."

A cursory glance at actual crime statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication reveals a country with a crime rate on the decrease in recent years, but noticeably increased from the level of nearly a decade ago. The total number of Felonious Offences in Japan (a category in which the MIAO puts Homicide, Arson, Robbery and Rape) in 2006 was 10,124 - nearly 1,000 fewer incidents than the previous year (11,360 in 2005), but nearly 2,000 more than in 1998 (which saw 8,253 F.O.s). Additionally troubling is the astonishing increase in Violent Offenses (a category including Bodily Injury, Extortion and the curiously vague category of "Violence") in the same time period - 41,751 VOs in 1998, 76,303 in 2006. (To be fair, however, the population has gone up since 1998.)

The common impression is that modern newspapers will no longer run a story about a kitten stuck in a tree unless the firefighter falls and breaks his neck trying to save it; however much the local media enjoy playing up stories of violence and mayhem (and they do seem to enjoy it), it's certainly worth noting that a terrible things do happen, and that the potential to be harmed is not simply media hype.

Japan's reputation as a peaceful nation - particularly in comparison to other, extremely unsafe places around the world - is still well-earned. However, despite its relatively stable level of security, the same common-sense rules that apply back home (meeting strangers in public, keeping an eye out for people following you) are still useful here; there were more than enough heinous stories from 2007 to remind of how even one of the safest places on earth can still be quite a dangerous place to be.

• The National Police Agency:
www.npa.go.jp/english/index.htm
• Emergency Police Assistance Phone Number: #110

Text: Jeff Lo
Illustration: Michael Napolitano