I'm a little skeptical. Many Japanese live in a pretty grinding form of underemployment poverty - "freeter" will get you lots of hits in Western media. Moreover

I'm a little skeptical. Many Japanese live in a pretty grinding form of underemployment poverty - "freeter" will get you lots of hits in Western media. Moreover, some truly deprived groups like the urban homeless are almost notorious for generally _not_ engaging in the sort of petty property crime we're talking about that's common in similar demographics in the West. Those make me lean towards cultural factors.