The screenshot above popped up somewhere in social media and it made me think because it is, to coin a phrase technically inaccurate but rhetorically correct. As a current multiyear resident in Japan I can confidently say that the details are generally wrong, but I can see how a visitor could get that impression. However the basic idea that Japan is a pleasant place to live in is fundamentally correct. Indeed in certain ways Japan is remarkably liberal compared to the US or Europe and is a lot more pleasant to live in than, say, San Francisco - to pick a city completely (not) at random.
The nitpicky bit
Let me start with the nit-picky accuracy part, taking it line by line:
Zero Homeless
You will see homeless people if you pay attention, however they are polite homeless people who won't mug you for the price of a hit of some drug and, polite or not, there aren't many of them. The number of rough-sleeping homeless in the whole of Japan (c. 3500) is probably about half that of just San Francisco (c 8000 a year or two ago). From direct observation I can confidently say that in the last decade or two the homeless encampments in Tokyo have decreased massively.
Zero people shitting on sidewalks
It is true that you will see zero people shitting on sidewalks although you may occasionally see a very drunk salaryman dropping a pavement pizza and (usually drunk) males definitely urinate here and there. But on the other hand even the homeless will use the fairly widely available public toilets when they can and those public toilets will usually not be an insanitary mess. The most basic may lack provided toilet paper (lacking TP is rare these days but was common in the past) but most do and many will even have heated toilet seats, bidets and other pleasantries. None of them are vandalized beyond perhaps a few grafitied "for a good time call ..." sorts of message.
Zero needles
Zero needles is true. No drug paraphernalia or drug addicts at all. If you are caught doing hard drugs in Japan you generally go to jail and if you are a foreigner you are kicked out with no chance of re-entry. Japanese people smoke tobacco and drink alcohol and that's it for intoxicants for 99.9+% of the population. Now and again some celebrity, politician or company boss will be caught doing cannabis or (shudder) cocaine and will make a public apology before disappearing from public life but it's extremely rare.
There are zero examples of public, open air drug use in Japan. Unlike in, say, San Francisco
Zero panhandlers
Beggars are likewise extremely rare. Now it is true I don't live in a major conurbation but I do visit them moderately frequently and I haven't seen a beggar for years. I have seen a Buddhist monk or pilgrim begging a couple of times but that's very different.
Zero trash in the streets
Similarly streets are not 100% trash free, but generally it's an occasional bit of trash blowing in the wind or can/plastic bottle washed up in a corner. Random people will pick trash up and take it with them to dispose of somewhere. The worst places for litter are the beaches and (from personal observation) most of the trash on them comes from the sea and the majority of that has Korean or mainland Chinese labels when it isn't anonymous fishing floats etc.
Zero loitering
This is correct if you mean loitering in a threatening thug-like way. There is essentially zero street crime in Japan. If you want to be mugged, raped by random strangers, pick-pocketed etc. you really have to work at it. The stories about people rushing after you to hand you the wallet you dropped are true.
Controlling who enters your country matters
Controlling who enters your country is only part of the solution. Japan used not to be as amazingly clean and safe as it is now as recently as 50 or 60 years ago. Japan is an extremely high-trust society and while it is certainly true that allowing undesirables in would erode that, it got to be a high trust society in part by some extremely harsh treatments of criminals and rebels dating back (if you squint at it) all the way to the Tokugawa shogunate. As a foreign visitor you reap the benefits of prior repression. Japan's police have a clean up rate for crimes of somewhere around 99%. Now part of that is low crime rate (it genuinely is low, but it is not as low as claimed - many crimes are not reported for various reasons) and clever massaging of crime reports but another part of that is failing to pay any attention to alibis or extenuating circumstances that might get the suspect off. If you interact officially for more than a traffic offense or similar with the Japanese police you will generally regret it, which is also one reason why crimes are often not reported. Everyone knows that and so almost everyone behaves really well just to be sure they don't have that negative interaction.
Comparing Japan and San Francisco
I wrote above a little about the difference in crime and drug use between Japan and San Francisco. I think it is worth expanding on this and comparing the numbers of various relevant things
That is to say we are going to look at how manay bad things happen in San Fancisco, population 808,000 (source), and Japan, population 123,294,513 (source). Simple sums tell us Japan has about 150 times the population of San Francisco
Drugs
Consider drug overdoses. As I wrote recently comparing Japan and British Columbia, Japan has about 10,000 people a year treated in hospital emergency rooms for drug overdoses. Based on this data, it looks like in 2023 San Francisco has 4550 overdose call outs. That is roughly half the total for the whole of Japan
I’ve found it hard to get a recent number of overdose deaths in Japan but I have seen a rate of 0.33/100k reported at various places (such as here). That works out at an annual death rate of about 400. Compare with San Francisco:
In 2022, the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported that 647 people died from an unintentional drug overdose in San Francisco.
And in 2023 that increased significantly
The most destructive year in San Francisco’s drug epidemic has ended with 806 people dead from accidental overdoses.
To summarize on drug issues.
Japan has about 400 deaths annually and about 10,000 overdoses that result in medical intervention.
In 2023 San Francisco has 800 deaths and 4550 overdoses that result in medical intervention.
Crime
How about murder?
The police in Japan recorded 853 murder cases in 2022
According to police data, there were 55 homicides in 2023, as of Dec. 24.
Theft?
The police in Japan recognized about 44.15 thousand grand theft offenses in 2022
Roughly speaking San Francisco has the same number of theft-like offenses as Japan when you combine the data (44,965 in 2023, 49,302 in 2022). Japan with 150 times the population has 16 times the murder rate. It is true, there are differences in how things are counted but it seems unlikely that using US counting methods would get Japan’s mruder numbers up to anywhere close to SF levels
Homelessness
We covered homelessness above. It is worth noting that although Japan has less than 3500 homeless who live on the streets, it does have a significant number of people who are temporarily homeless but sleep in unofficial accomodations like all night internet cafes. About 5000 or so had to be found housing when the Covidiocy caused the net cafes to shut for a while. It is hard to differentiate between the long-term net cafe residents and ones that spend a few nights there as a cheap hotel alternative for a M-F wordk week say. If you add in the estimates for these people Japan may have more homeless people than the combination of “street living” and “living in shelters” homeless in San Francisco city. On the other hand San Francisco has (or had pre covidiocy anyway) a large “couch surfing” population of generally younger people. I am unable to tell to what extent the phenomenon survived the covidiocy and the general movement to “working from home” that meant many such could move somewhere else.
San Francisco’s homeless number is of the same magnitude as Japan’s despite Japan having 150 times the population
House prices
It’s mean to include rural Japan in a survey of house prices since in parts of rural Japan they will give you a house. However even in urban Japan, prices are considerably lower than the $1.2 million Zillow reports for San Francisco. Other sites report that San Francisco homes sell at about $1000/sq ft.
In Tokyo:
Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Centre ¥1,149,789.47
Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre ¥638,726.32
Converting those to US$ / sq ft on the same site
Price per Square Feet to Buy Apartment in City Centre 719.92 $ 407.61-1,127.04
Price per Square Feet to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre 399.93 $ 222.28-579.17
Even central Tokyo prices are lower on per floor area basis that San Francisco.
The same site reports that renting a 3 bedroom central Tokyo apartment costs an average of $2,592.62/month and obviously a one or two bedroom one is lower. Zillow reports that
median rent for all bedrooms and all property types in San Francisco, CA is $3,295.
Prices are notably lower in Tokyo than San Francisco and even cheaper elsewhere in Japan
Public Transportation
Elementary-age school children take the train or bus in Japan in (near?) perfect safety with the only danger being that they are socialized to wearing masks inappropriately. Adults fall asleep on them and people will stop their expensive iDevices from falling out of their hands onto the floor. Plus of course in urban Japan services are as frequent as every 2-3 minutes during rush hours. I can personally attest that ridership in Tokyo is similar to the levels pre-covidiocy.
San Francisco? Articles like this:
Only 17 percent of Bay Area residents feel safe on local public transit, and overwhelming majorities say crime and homelessness are out of control in the system, according to an official survey released this week.
The Bay Area Council commissioned the poll to understand why Bay Area Rapid Transit ridership remains woefully below its pre-pandemic numbers. Per the survey, the problem is less a rise in remote work than widespread concerns about safety and cleanliness. Forty-five percent of local residents cited those issues as the main reason they don't use BART, and 78 percent said they would ride more often if the trains and buses were cleaner and safer.
And if you don’t like the Free Beacon you can easily find other sources like this one and many, many more.
Retail and Office
In Tokyo office space is still desirable:
In October 2023, the vacancy rate for office space in Tokyo's five central business districts reached 6.1 percent. The office vacancy rate in the capital's central business districts reached a low of 1.5 percent in early 2020, but increased significantly during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Office space is more available outside Tokyo and there is generally plenty of demand for it and for shared working spaces etc.
In San Francisco:
The San Francisco office market continues to struggle, but it hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Office vacancy in the city rose to new heights in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to new preliminary data from commercial real estate firm CBRE. The vacancy rate increased to 35.9%, a modest jump from last quarter’s rate of 34%. That translates to another 1.4 million square feet of occupancy loss — the equivalent of Salesforce Tower completely emptying out.
San Francisco is also seeing the closure of many retail establishments such as this long established toy shop. Japan, as a general rule, is not. A department store close to me did close recently and this was fairly big news because of its rarity.
Tourism
Tourism in both Japan and San Francisco declined precipitously during the covidiocy and has gradually recovered. Although there is some bad news, it looks like by the end of 2023 tourism numbers in San Francisco are going to be close to those in 2019.
Japan, likewise, is recovering nicely and from October this year had more monthly foreign visitors than the same month in 2019. Intra-Japanese tourism has also now recovered.
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted domestic travel (and has had a catastrophic impact on inbound and outbound travel), resulting in record-low industry revenues between 2020 and 2022. The void of travelers caused by the advent of the pandemic led to sluggish performances during that period in related industry segments, such as the hospitality industry, gastronomy, and transportation industry, among others. In 2023, domestic tourism almost fully recovered, while inbound and outbound tourism were on a recovery track.
Aside: it is interesting to note that Japan as a country had about as many foreign tourists as San Francisco had tourists in total.
One difference is the perception. When you start typin San Francisco Tourism into google it offers “decline” as one of the auto-completes
For Japan there is nothing like that.
Conclusion
Japan as a country has similar negative statistics spread across 150 times the population as San Francisco, while positive statistics seem to be more or less at parity. Both are, in theory, nice rich places but San Francisco is more expensive and far, far more dangerous.
While the is certainly true now, it was far less so ten or so years ago before the tsunami of illegal aliens inundated the U.S. and the defund the police madness took hold. Japan is not as safe as we would like to think, as the Japanese would like us to think. To get to truth of the matter will take a long posting, which I very well may undertake on my own substack. I do not wish to hijack yours for one of my pet peeves. However, I can say this, until I can to Japan I did not understand why pride was a deadly sin. I do now. Briefly I can relate a little.
The two women who once lived next door were murdered, roughly a month apart ten years ago and the creep who did it still brings the kairanban around. I was interviewed by the police after each killing, the perp coming over and interrupting the first interview and standing in the second story window listening to the second. The brilliant keystone cops interviewing me deciding to do so in the approach to my home. There are few things in the world that actually exist that are rarer than a criminal pathologist in Japan. My prefecture as none, as do most in Japan.
Years ago, in response to an article on rape of gaijin women in Japan, I wrote an letter to the editor of the Japan Times detailing what I knew of rapes of students at my university. I will try to post it here later if I can.
Here is the article that prompted my response.
Japan Times
Japan: no safe country for foreign women
A Tokyoite reassesses her view of Japan after another violent encounter is ignored by passers-by, police
By Holly Lanasolyluna. Oct 23, 2013
I’ve lived in Japan on and off for several years, and I’ve always felt safe on my bicycle here, particularly as I often see young and old women alike biking at all hours of the night. But after an event a few weeks ago, I feel as if this false sense of security has been stripped away.
Cycling home at 8:30 p.m. on a well-lit street in Tokyo, I sensed another biker by my side, so I slowed down to let him pass. At that point he suddenly cut over, trapped me against a parked car and grabbed my tire.
He began yelling at me in Japanese, but the only thing I could clearly understand was “You stole this bicycle!” I insisted that I had not and tried to pull away, but the man was strong and continued yanking on my bike. I bought it from a shop brand-new, so I knew it wasn’t stolen. I
also didn’t believe that it was my bicycle he wanted.
I yelled, both in English and Japanese, “Help! Call the police!” Many people observed the fracas but did nothing to help. He pulled me across a street full of traffic, briefly blocking cars, but almost everyone just seemed to ignore it.
It felt like hours of struggling, but then a young woman on a bicycle appeared. By now I must have had tears streaming down my face and my voice was almost gone. She said to me calmly: “I know this man. You stole this bicycle. I’m calling the police.”
Were this man and this girl working together? Or was it just so believable that a foreigner could have stolen the bike that she instinctively believed him? And if they were a team, what did they want? A mama chari worth $100? I didn’t think she was actually calling the police, but I had no idea how to describe my exact location to call them myself, and I didn’t want to wait to see what would happen next. My instinct told me to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Noticing the man had loosened his grip on my bicycle, I pulled it out of his hands and took off, with the sound of the pair yelling fading behind me. I biked away so quickly that they couldn’t catch up, to a convenience store about 10 minutes away. My arms and head were throbbing.
Seeing a police car pull up at a red light, I waved and yelled at them. Somehow the officers didn’t see me and drove away, so I met up with my boyfriend, who happened to be nearby, and we went to a kōban (police box) together.
At the kōban, the police officer’s response went as follows: “Wow, that’s strange. Were they Japanese? Well, I can’t really do anything because I’m here by myself and they’re probably not there anymore. You’re a young girl, and maybe you shouldn’t be out by yourself alone at night.”
No details about the incident were recorded. Not only had every bystander ignored my pleas for help, but the police had also given me a terribly disappointing response — basically, “Shō ga nai, ne?” (“What can you do, eh?”).
This was not the first time that something like this had happened to me in Japan. The last time was in Osaka one morning, around 10 a.m., when a stranger picked me up and tried to carry me into a love hotel. Then, I kept kicking and punching until he dropped me. I tried to run away, but he was much taller than me and kept catching up.
Our struggle went on for at least 10 minutes, and none of the many onlookers helped or even appeared concerned. Finally, I saw a police officer down the street and screamed at my attacker, “Look! Look! It’s the police!” That seemed to frighten him, and at that point he walked over to a nearby vending machine, bought me a water, said “gomen nasai” (sorry) and walked away.
At that time I had few friends in Japan, and everyone I told said first, “Was he Japanese?” and second, “Things like that never happen in Japan.” (I hadn’t even thought about his ethnicity; he was Asian and had spoken to me in Japanese.)
Everyone made it seem like it was such a random experience that I almost, in fact, felt ashamed,
thinking I must have done something to provoke this bizarre behavior. When this second incident occurred, I started to suspect that these events weren’t unusual. I posted a description of what had happened on Facebook and asked if people had had similar experiences.
The response was overwhelming: stories of being attacked while jogging, being stalked by male and female students, being groped on the street in broad daylight, men masturbating on trains, attempted kidnappings. All of these stories came from strong women who put up a vicious fight but still walked away with psychological (and sometimes physical) injuries. In all of these stories, the victims had been in a “safe” public place but no one tried to help them or call the police. If this is so common, why does Japan maintain a reputation for being so safe? And is this image of safety actually facilitating these incidents?
Many say Tokyo is the best place to host the Olympics because it is safe. And in many ways it is: Foreigners are astounded to walk into Starbucks and see iPhones left unattended on a table to reserve a seat, for example. When I lived in Barcelona, my phone wasn’t safe even in my pocket. Still, the two most aggressive attacks in my life happened in Japan, not in “unsafe” countries I backpacked through alone and at a younger age. Thus I don’t think Japan is as safe as the image propagated about the country suggests. It seems that just about every foreign woman I know has a terrible story to tell. I have no way of knowing if this number is as high for Japanese women, because only foreign women shared their stories with me.
Some of us do wonder: Are these types of attacks more prevalent among foreign women? It is hard to tell, but perhaps for the attacker such a target could be less risky. Many foreign women would not know where and how to report such an incident. Even in my case, having a Japanese boyfriend to go with me and translate, the police still didn’t record any information or search for the people involved. Moreover, since foreigners are often associated with crime, bystanders might be less likely to intervene or call the police.
After all these years, I clearly remember anti-groping cartoon posters in the Fukuoka subway depicting a man with dark skin touching a white woman. Even at the time, I thought it reflected a still-prevalent view in Japan: Crime and criminals are non-Japanese. When a crime happens, people almost always ask, “Was (s)he Japanese?” Of course, Japanese people too commit crimes, and “othering” the victims and perpetrators only makes it easier for crimes to go unaddressed, thus making society less safe for both foreigners and Japanese.
As I’ve mentioned, for all I know these types of attacks are just as common among Japanese women. Rather than jumping to conclusions, I’m simply hoping to start a dialogue that might help bring about solutions. I have always known that Japan had perverts — like anywhere — but until recently they had seemed fairly benign.
As a minority in Japan, foreign women do receive a lot of male attention and are often offered work as hostesses. They also complain to me about how they feel objectified in Japan. White models and mannequins are seen everywhere, even though white women represent a tiny percentage of the population.
In a way, white women become plastic here: imports without feelings — strange, exotic dolls. And
if we are dolls, perhaps the groping, leering, stalking and attacking is somehow justified in the perpetrator’s mind as a game rather than a crime.
When I first moved to Japan, I tolerated the staring, following and persistent nampa (pickup artists), but after being assaulted twice in public, they have taken on darker undertones. I now know I can’t rely on the goodwill of strangers, as I have in the past when I was verbally harassed in countries such as Mexico. Interest from strangers that I could have dismissed as innocent curiosity a few years ago now gives me the chills.
Despite its many stereotypes and inconveniences, I love Japan. So do a lot of the women who shared their stories with me. I am attracted to Japan because it’s so different from my culture. I want to keep living here and unlocking the mysteries I encounter every day, but I have ideas about how it could be made a safer place. Just because I love this country, it does not mean I have to love it unconditionally and ignore those things I might disagree with.
Experiencing these incidents and hearing other women’s stories has altered my daily behavior. I have vowed to be more careful as I calculate risks in my daily life. I carry Mace. At night, I take roads that have lots of kōbans on them, and I know how to explain my route should I have to talk to a police officer.
I’m not paranoid, but I also won’t let surprise be a weapon.
Holly Lanasolyluna is a professor, photojournalist and toy songwriter from California. Foreign Agenda offers a forum for opinion on fourth (and fifth) Thursdays. Send comments