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If I were to speculate, I think, no, there's still plenty of crime, but like a lot of Japanese culture, it's dealt with informally by the group. To actually go
by Noos 9y ago
If I were to speculate, I think, no, there's still plenty of crime, but like a lot of Japanese culture, it's dealt with informally by the group. To actually go to the police is an admission your local culture or group can't harmonize what happened, so you need to have harmony forced on you. That doesn't mean actual innocent or guilt; just that harmony is maintained.
If it ever has to escalate to the police in that kind of culture, it's something really serious that the normal means of informal dealing and restitution won't work at all. And the mindset when that happens is dangerous, because the objective can be more "quickly restore harmony by any means necessary" than "find the guilty." Like the old chinese kung-fu movies where they would grab someone, torture him, then make him sign a confession. It's more important to resolve the situation to restore balance than disrupt that to right wrongs.
Again, this is real speculation, but Japanese are people too; they don't somehow possess a special human nature that removes all the nasty emotional impetus behind crime.
- larkeith 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this is partially the case, but the homicide rate suggests to me that there is also a significantly lower amount of (serious) crime - it seems difficult and unlikely that murder would or could be handled without involving authorities.
- Nexxxeh 9y agoDuring the recent gun crime argument in the wake of the Vegas shooting in the US, someone pointed to Japan as an example of strict gun laws. Japan has more than double the suicide rate than the UK, and noticeably higher than the US. I wonder if some murders in Japan are written up as suicides in order to close the case quickly? Plus I would would guess Japanese people are more likely to kill themselves than go on a murder spree of family members or coworkers, but that's just based on what I've seen as an outsider.
- jopsen 9y agoJapan is notorious for extreme work ethics.. so a high suicide rate is not surprising. I'm don't think it's fair to make wild speculation like that without sources. It not like they haven't investigated the high (but also falling) suicide rate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan
- Noos 9y agoI don't know. It wouldn't surprise me that a village culture would do even that. I couldn't say, though. I just am suspicious when I see outlier stats on something which is fairly universal in human nature.
- mjfl 9y ago> they don't somehow possess a special human nature that removes all the nasty emotional impetus behind crime. It's called culture, and it is causal.
- drawnwren 9y agoI experienced exactly the opposite of your comment. Going to the police was the default answer for Japanese. A friend of mine parked his bike in front of his apartment one evening, the police were called and the bike was destroyed by the time he had asked about it the next day.