WWW Violence Smack-Down

In response to a great comment by Pam to my post Why I Like Japan I was inspired to do a little bit of research on how two different countries and cultures are affected and effected by violent crimes.

The first place I started was a quick google search for some statistics. What I found was that Japan, while crime is considered "on the rise" there, is actually the safest between the three sample countries (US, Britain, Japan) with a rate of 1,925 per 100,000 as opposed to the US's 2,740 per 100K, and Britain's whopping 9,677. That last number caused me to question all of the statistics, and I'm looking for alternate sources as we speak. (all stats were for 2001 as I couldn't find 2003 numbers for any non-US countries).

The interesting thing, however, goes beyond the simple matter of "which country has more violent crime". There is no international standard for what constitutes a "violent crime", and so you have to wonder what crimes are and aren't being tallied by the respective governments. For example, I've been to the UK before and it certainly didn't seem like a crime pool. Sure, I had to be wary of unguarded trash bins (I lived there during the time of frequent IRA bombings), but overall the place just felt safe. In contrast, if you read the daily news headlines from New On Japan you get a much grimmer picture of Japan. From the past few days, we have headlines like:

• Jul 27 Japan braces for more tremors after earthquakes (SABC)

• Jul 27 Cartoon book inspires teen prostitution gang to comical success (Mainichi)

• Jul 27 Efforts to restore order begin in quake hit Miyagi (Kyodo)

• Jul 27 Hang glider, paraglider involved in fatal mid-air crash (Mainichi)

• Jul 27 No deaths in strong Japanese quakes but people worried about the 'big one' (AFP)

• Jul 27 Quakes jolt northeastern Japan (Reuters)

• Jul 27 US civilian on Okinawa pleads guilty to marijuana-smuggling (Stars and Stripes)

• Jul 27 Martial artist arrested over grappling grope (Yomiuri)

• Jul 27 Outnumbered man held in fatal stabbing (Yomiuri)

• Jul 27 Boy's relatives to ask for court info in Nagasaki murder case (Kyodo)

...Seems pretty discouraging, especially when you compare that to the US national news. MSNBC seems to think that nothing is happening outside of Iraq, and reports only the following "local" headlines:

MORE TOP STORIES

• U.S. troops nearly nab Saddam guard

• Newsweek: Odai, Qusaiís final days

• †Rebel Philippine troops end standoff

• †Israel to release up to 100 militants

ALSO IN THE NEWS

• †U.S. asks Liberia rebels to withdraw

• WP: U.S. to seek more Afghan aid

• Body found in Baylor-player search

• Red Sox win in 9th against Benitez

You would think that Japan is a crime-pit, and that the US is some wonderland when in fact they suffer just 70% as many violent crimes per capita as we do (at least as of 2001). Then again, it should be no big surprise to anyone in the USA that our media has glossed over the two-thousand-some-odd crimes in favor of international news and one case of a celebrity death.

So the question I now pose is this: In both our willingness to look at the "dark side" of our society and our willingness to talk about, are we effecting some sort of positive change? Or does airing dirty laundry just encourage the darker elements and make the matter worse? It would seem that Japan -- known internationally as a very safe place -- is eager to point out their own flaws and to criticize themselves publicly, while Americans aren't nearly as likely to do that... (I am resisting the urge to point to current US government "scandals" regarding intelligence gathering and recent acts of war... of wait, I just did. ;-)

Again, I'm tending to think that my original impression that "Japan deals with life well" was a correct one; their daily news doesn't hide things, and yet national statistics show that they're much better off for it. And again, I hope that the few of my Japanese (Japan-in-America) readers can shed some light on the subject. That is, if they don't all think that I'm a big jerk by now.

UPDATE: I verified some crime statistics in Japan based upon information received from www.stat.go.jp/english/ and they're close to what I reported above, showing about 2100 violent crimes per 100,000 people (if i did the math right). Another source puts the 2003 total cases of violent crimes at only 72,000... but I believe that this is for Tokyo only.

Another interesting (but outdated) source had this to say:

"Major crimes occur in Japan at a very low rate. In 1989 Japan experienced 1.3 robberies per 100,000 population, compared with 48.6 for West Germany, 65.8 for Britain, and 233.0 for the United States; and it experienced 1.1 murder per 100,000 population, compared with 3.9 for West Germany, 9.1 for Britain, and 8.7 for the United States that same year. Japanese authorities also solve a high percentage of robbery cases (75.9 percent, compared with 43.8 percent for West Germany, 26.5 percent for Britain, and 26.0 percent for the United States) and homicide cases (95.9 percent, compared with 94.4 percent for Germany, 78.0 percent for Britain, and 68.3 percent for the United States)."

Oh.. I also did another quick "Headline snapshot" of several news sites and found that once again the Japanese headlines seemed to focus more on crime.