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Julian Ryall

A majority of people in Japan feel their personal safety has worsened in the last decade despite the country’s reputation around the world as being safe, a trend one analyst blamed on television shows glorifying crime.
According to a National Police Agency survey of 5,000 residents, 74.4 per cent respondents said they were more concerned for their safety.
The annual poll, released in late February, also found that only 56.4 per cent believed public safety in Japan was “good”, the first time the figure had fallen under 60 per cent.
“I feel that I am less safe when I go out today,” Emi Izawa, a 22-year-old student, told This Week in Asia.
“The thing that frightens me is the increase in random attacks on people in the street or on a train,” the part-time cafe worker in Yokohama said.
“There is nothing anyone can really do to protect themselves from that sort of attack and it is exhausting always being careful about what is going on around me.”
Izawa said she was nervous of a repeat of the 2021 incident in which a 24-year-old man injured 17 people in a knife and arson attack on a Tokyo train. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison two years later.
“I understand that lots of people are struggling and suffering because of the economy, especially in comparison with how it was during the ‘bubble years’ of the 1990s, but I do not understand why someone would attack an innocent bystander,” she said.
Izawa added that such acts could also spark copycat attacks because people “want attention, even if it is for doing something terrible”.


Official data showed that crime went up over the last two years. Analysts attribute this rise to the total number of incidents decreasing sharply during the pandemic and expect the rate to drop back to levels seen from 2002 to 2021.
Out of the 703,351 crimes reported in the 2023 financial year, which ended on March 31 last year, 483,695 cases were of bicycle theft.
There were just 912 homicides over the course of the year, up by 59 from the previous year, although that figure includes deaths that in other jurisdictions would be considered manslaughter or fatalities in road accidents.
“Crime rates have fallen dramatically since the 1950s, for example, but that has not stopped ordinary Japanese from feeling that they are more at risk than people were back then,” said Izumi Tsuji, a professor of the sociology of culture at Tokyo’s Chuo University.
“The causes of crime have clearly changed in that time,” he said, pointing out that poverty-stricken people stole in the past simply to have enough food to eat, but not “crime has become more difficult to understand”.

“The statistics show us that the number of serious crime cases has not increased, but people feel there are more incidents because they see it more often on television or on social media,” Tsuji said.
He also accused reality shows and broadcasters of fanning the flames of fear by airing crime-centric programmes to attract viewers’ attention.
“I believe that we see more of these sorts of stories all the time now, so it is probably not a surprise that people are getting more nervous about their safety,” Tsuji said.
The police survey on crime came as a government study showed that 83.1 per cent of Japanese supported the death penalty, up 2.3 percentage points from a previous poll in 2019.
More than 53 per cent said abolishing the punishment would lead to an increase in serious crimes, according to the findings released on February 21.


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An expert says media coverage of crime and societal changes could have influenced a poll showing residents felt less safe in the past decade


An expert says media coverage of crime and societal changes could have influenced a poll showing residents felt less safe in the past decade.


Crime