I was in a massively busy market street in Dotonbori, Osaka, at night.
A police whistle shrieked, and I turned and saw a police officer absolutely booking it through the crowd, shoving through people, shouting at some perpetrator.
My American-cultured brain thought, "This is it, someone's about to die." It seriously freaked me out.
I watched, and he caught up to... a guy on a bike. It was a no-biking zone. He gave the guy a ticket.
Dude I recently had a run-in with the police over a bicycle, dang! It was an abandoned bike that had been in a field for several days and I was watching it rust to bits as I was walking my dog
So I did what any self-respecting Canadian would do, I decided to be a hero.. I wheeled it home and showed it to my wife she says 'you better do something with it' so a day passes and we show it to my mother in law and she decides to call the local police to come get it
Lo and behold they show up but right away the guy starts going at me 'why did you take another person's property?' treating me like a criminal i.e. guilty until proven innocent. He makes me sit in the back of his car, separates me from my mother in law, asks for my identification, takes my passport, my employment, the works
They even called the detective squad and three guys roll up in a van
It was some kind of interrogation, I felt like Otto Warmbier. He asked every question under the sun, apparently he thought my mother in law was calling to report me for stealing a bike and he explained that it was no different than a bloody knife or a stolen purse. I decided to take the comical side and laughed my ass off when he told me that. It was more about him saving face to his command at that point
I couldn't believe the ludicrous nature of the whole deal. My only saving grace was that I'm married to a Japanese national so that got me off the hook, along with an intervention by my father in law and the local member of city government who lives down the street, otherwise I may have gone missing and ended up deported for all I know
Bicycle crime is real dude and I can totally understand why asian people suffer from such glaring groupthink and disdain for helping anyone -- no good deed goes unpunished for real
As a fellow gaijin in Japan, you seem like you’ve learned nothing about living here. The whole tone of your story is so smug and obnoxious.
The reason that even minor crimes (stealing a bicycle) are taken seriously is that letting small things slide is the beginning of an erosion of the rule of law. You should probably learn your lesson and leave things that aren’t yours alone. Furthermore, the fact that you think your political connections got you off the hook tells us everything we need to know about your exceptionalist outlook.
People like you make the police skeptical of foreigners like myself who bother to learn and play by the rules out of respect for our host country.
Your post sounds like some sort of Stockholm Syndrome manifestation. The other poster found a bicycle seemingly abandoned in a public place, and the police response quite correctly sounds ridiculous. That you so casually refer to yourselves as Gaijin -- which is a manifestation of Japan's incredible cultural insecurity and xenophobia -- should be indicting Japan, not somehow used to defend them. Gaijin or not [1], he has every right to have opinions about things.
Multiple detectives investigating a bicycle theft is absurd. This has positively nothing to do with the broken window theory, but instead is exactly what the article talks about which is an overstaffed police force with little to do.
And it doesn't have little to do because Japan is such a cultural gem. It has little to do because Japan is facing a population implosion as the population ages with few children. Youth and young adults are, unsurprisingly, responsible for most crime, and when you have few in that demographic crime drops. No surprise.
[1] It's interesting to think about this in the context of a Japanese person in, say, Canada. They meet with a ridiculous scenario with a ridiculous response, and when vocalizing to a coworker how ridiculous it is they are told that they are a smug foreigner and need to shut the hell up. That would be simply outrageous, and is the sort of thing the worst sort of racist would resort to.
For what it's worth, I wish I even had a single detective working my bicycle theft case. Hell, put an intern on the case just to make me feel like something might happen.
Right now, property crime reports just blatantly go into the void in US cities.
Yes, when I got my bike stolen - in broad daylight, in front of a public place - the response was pretty much "sucks to be you, good luck with the next one, we can take report if you want but don't expect anything happening because it never does".
I think you are post rationalizing. Places like Norway, where I live have far more chill police and would let smaller things slide. Yet Norway is about as safe as Japan.
Most difference between crime in Norway and Japan is more likely down to Norway having much larger immigrant population from poorer countries.
I think your attitude easily ends up excusing police states. Japanese justice system is highly questionable. Almost nobody ever gets acquitted in the justice system, and prison is rather harsh. Norway gets away with low crime despite (or because of) probably the worlds most liberal prison system.
Don't get me wrong. I admire a lot about Japan, but I think you easily fall into the trap of thinking that everything great about Japan is directly the result of something bad.
I would argue more important factor causing law crime in Japan is much the same as in Nordic countries. Low levels of inequality. How people are socialized. Stricter gun laws.
And let us not forget that the average age is high in Japan. Older people commit a lot less crime.
"Japan's official murder rate is widely believed to be significantly underreported"
in response to someone noting that Norway's murder rate is 2.5x Japan's murder rate.
None of the articles you linked to even mentions an elevated or misreported murder rate. Instead you linked to articles suggesting that sex crimes are underreported. Sex crimes are actually underreported in just about every industrialized country, US included.
Given that the official murder statistics are what they are, citation is still required
Japan polices itself so that the police generally don’t have to. I don’t know about Norway, so I won’t comment. I can tell you it’s easy to avoid trouble with the state in Japan. Your biggest worry is going to be an older person who enforces social norms, which is exactly what got GP here.
I looked very briefly at that study. It compares US cities to other US cities using data from 1990. I would be more interested in how the US stacks up against other countries that don't have to act within the limitations of the Second Amendment. More recent data would probably be valuable as well.
It is racist. It is making generalizations of people in an entire country based on old history. It would be like calling the US a country of literal cowboys.
>The reason that even minor crimes (stealing a bicycle) are taken seriously is that letting small things slide is the beginning of an erosion of the rule of law.
I certainly don't feel bad throwing a wrapper on the ground if the whole ground is full of wrappers already. I wouldn't anymore anyway, but it's largely true - people feel worse about committing a crme when they know others don't or aren't doing it.
"The broken windows theory is a criminological theory that states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, public drinking, and fare evasion help to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes."
I guess it's a valid approach - see broken window syndrome - but at the same time it's only something you can do if the police force has the luxury to respond to minor (possible) crimes. Second, it doesn't work in e.g. the US where many people are arrested, tried and jailed for small crimes, e.g. possession of marihuana. Is that a deterrent? Does it work to reduce the production, trade and consumption of drugs? Does it over time cause the prison population to reduce and prisons to close?
Correlation is not causation. Somewhere where there isn't for example a lot of police presence might have a lot of petty crime, but the inverse isn't true. Many authoritarian countries with completely corrupt legal systems enforce petty crimes harshly. If anything this tends to suggest an erosion of the rule of law, since the purpose of the rule of law is to weight different interests against each other with things like proportionality.
In Japan, it’s common to see politicians, business people, or celebrities lose their entire livelihood and reputation over crimes such as mistakes in accounting for business lunches amounting to a few hundred dollars, or possession of a few grams of pot. Likewise, even a hint of political favors or major financial shenanigans carry huge impact. There will be deep bowing, sincere tears, and deep, deep, lasting shaming and exile from professional circles. It’s what a culture that keeps shame alive looks like, and IMO it’s a lot healthier than places that let the rich walk free after being caught red-handed, while the poor get locked up for life or murdered by the state over trivial, non-violent crimes.
He saw an abandoned bike in a field and took it home to get rid of it. The police definitely overreacted, and you just showed by 'broken windows' policing has a whole problem with implicit bias as the police seemed pretty prejudiced for him being a foreigner even though no crime was actually committed.
Every bike in Japan needs to registered with the police. Also, there are very specific rules governing abandoned property. Just saying “well no one else was using it” isn’t proof of the absence of a crime.
It wasn't for him to decide if this bicycle was abandoned or not. When you live in Japan you learn very fast how the law works. You do not touch anything that is not yours under any circumstances. In situation described as above you do not take the bike. Instead you call the police and report that is has been abandoned. It's trivial, really. And yes, maybe police was a bit prejudice in this case. But statistics and practice shows that vast majority of Japanese would not take this bike and this I can confirm first hand. Overall I think it was a good lesson. No harm done to anyone but the OP will remember for the rest of his life that he should not touch what's not his.
> The reason that even minor crimes (stealing a bicycle) are taken seriously is that letting small things slide is the beginning of an erosion of the rule of law.
Doesn't seem like the best argument, because that isn't necessarily how the rule of law works. Taking abandon property isn't necessarily theft, even using a non-abandoned bike isn't necessarily theft but something like "unlawful usage", and if you don't intend to keep the object it is even less theft. It many countries it isn't a "minor crime" to leaving an abandoned bike with the police, but simply what you are supposed to do. But apparently Tokyo has a big problem with abandoned bikes [0]. You sentiment mostly just seems to confirm OPs suggestion that people should know their place.
I get your sentiment though. As a foreigner, tying to live here and have normal, fulfilling relationships takes a metric ton of work. In my experience, there's a bit of an endowment effect, where the coping mechanisms and language successes we pick up through the years get tied into our personal identities.
I've certainly gotten my jimmies ruffled by Outrageous Gaijin TM on many occasions, but I feel like there's a lot of room for mutual growth and 切磋琢磨ing through those interactions.
To flip things on their head a bit, mutual understanding and cooperation are held as socially high ideals here. I think most Japanese would agree those are better than dropping harsh judgement.
Anyway, if you just made a careless post after a stressful day or something, then let me buy you a beer (or tea, if you prefer). My email is in my profile.
Why does taking someone's bike home make you a hero? You could have just tipped off the police that someone left their bike in the field. It really sounds like you thought you gained a free bike until your mother in law got involved.
Maybe there was a major misunderstanding somewhere.
In general, if at all possible, I think it's best to tell the police (or staff members of whatever facility you happen to be inside) when there's an object that does not belong.
My experiences with the Japanese police:
1. I once found a wallet and carried it all the way to a nearby police box. Had to fill out some forms but no problems.
2. Another time I found and captured a dog running around town and had the police come to fetch it. Again no problems.
3. Just today while renewing my driver's license, I had some time before the lecture started so I walked out of the classroom and searched for a vending machine. I probably looked like I was a bit lost, and a police officer asked me what was wrong.
- Anyway - The plural of anecdote isn't data but I've only had nice encounters with the Japanese police so far.
(1) was in Hadano (Kanagawa), (2) was in Matsue (Shimane), (3) was in Nagoya.
Thinking back I left out a couple encounters.
4. Asked the police box staff if they knew how to get to my hotel (this was before smartphones were common), they helped me (Tokyo)
5. Filed a lost item report (my wallet was stolen, in Japan!) (Tokyo). Didn't turn up (duh) but I think I needed a piece of paper to get back my teikiken on my Suica card.
6. Filed another lost "item" report (a dog I was taking care of ran off. Man, that was nerve-wrecking). They actually helped me look for the dog I think! (No relation with the dog incident in Matsue.) (Shounan region, Kanagawa prefecture)
7. I was cycling to work and it was raining. I was holding an umbrella in one hand and a police car passed by and they used their loudspeakers to tell me to close my umbrella (but didn't stop me or anything). This was in a rather rural area of a rural town (Matsue). I think this is a recently introduced law -- someone holding an umbrella while cycling bumped? crashed? into someone and actually killed them. :/
8. Apparently police box officers walk around the neighborhood ringing on every doorbell and asking if anything's been up lately. That happened in Nagoya a couple weeks ago. I liked it.
“Bicycle crime is real dude and I can totally understand why asian people suffer from such glaring groupthink and disdain for helping anyone -- no good deed goes unpunished for real”
Is it untrue? If reporting an abandoned bike might end with you as the prime suspect in an investigation who is going to report anything more serious like corruption or abuse?
I actually admire the fact that they take bicycle theft seriously there.
In my East London flat I look out on an otherwise secluded balcony where a certain gentleman stores an ever-changing selection of nice looking bikes. I suppose it's possible that he's a legitimate bicycle trader, but given the fact that it's a) a total crackhead flat, and b) he doesn't seem to treat these nice bikes with any respect, just dumping them in a heap, I'm 99% sure they're stolen. I'd report it if it wasn't totally pointless, because the London Police don't care about bike theft.
Yeah I wouldn't bother either. Bikes seem like the first thing to go to chaos once the police make it obvious that it isn't on the radar.
It's like an athlete in combat sports not hiding the fact that they are gassed. There has to be some attempt to guise the reality or the situation devolves even faster.
That's precisely what I mean my fellows
a) My smug tone is because I've lived here long enough to know the rules are off and I'm pretty much a kept animal, as well I mean that by the end of it one thing set off another and it got so far out of hand even our local political representative had to get woken up from his slumber to settle the matter. In North America the cops don't even handle this sort of thing let alone the detective squad
b) I used the expression 'decided to be a hero' because in these situations everyone will tell you 'don't be a hero' but I didn't want the bike to rust any more or risk getting taken away so I wheeled it up to do my duty as a 'citizen' i.e. take accountability for its safe return
c) Yes I did adopt the tone of villainy, it's hard to pass through people's sarcasm detectors but don't forget you're reading my words in your perception of my tone of voice and we're all one cosmic consciousness experiencing itself etc
d) Yes, my last snarky jab is necessary because in Asian countries everyone will tell you don't step out of line it's about the rule of law and don't stick your neck out even more than western countries because the police forces here have a real fetish for upholding the iron rule of law
e) don't start labelling me based one anecdote, come and have a beer with me first and see where I'm really coming from.. I've got even worse ones to share that make everyone in a prefecture a thousand kilometres away eye you badly --
> I didn't want the bike to rust any more or risk getting taken away so I wheeled it up to do my duty as a 'citizen' i.e. take accountability for its safe return
The normal thing to do in this case would have been to wheel it to the local kōban...
I've heard of cases where people don't help even in serious situations, like someone is bleeding on the road after an accident (not in Japan) and this is the reason why. Cops can easily ruin your day, even if you are genuinely helping
> I can totally understand why asian people suffer from such glaring groupthink and disdain for helping anyone -- no good deed goes unpunished for real
Imagine being this vilely racist while being married to an Asian person. I feel sorry for your wife.
Unfortunately, it is true -- especially in Eastern Asia.
I said that at the risk of being accused of having internalized racism as an Asian person, but the situation on the ground really does resemble what he said.
And furthermore, Japan is a country built on saving face, couldn't the officer assume best intentions or simply a thief trying to come clean and let me slide without giving me the danged third degree? I was even wearing a bowtie no joke!
Yes, it's true that's what one ought to do, but really, is it? I mean this from a humanist level, is it really beholden to us as a society to need the intervention of the police state for something as peer-to-peer as returning a lost bicycle? Who am I to judge I'm just a stranger in a strange land.
Back home in Toronto, we have this silly habit of picking people's lost clothing items and putting them up on fences and signposts in case they come back to retrieve them. Under these circumstances here it's safer to walk on by -- same goes with the bike in the generalized sense the burden of returning the bike gets far greater due to the simple fact that most people simply won't bother, hence the need for a gaijin hero to step in and set things to rights
It's not only Japan. For better or worse, just walking by, leaving things as they are and calling the police is a better way to go in most of Europe, too. Usually it's for the better.
Exactly. I've done it before (for fly tipping, auto parts, discarded home appliances). They will take care of it, eventually. Or someone else will grab the stuff. Either way, not really your problem. If you get the bike, just repaint it and keep it I guess.
I was in Japan for a month not long ago and one thing that stood out for me was police walking around with large wooden sticks. Many walked around with expandable police batons, casually fully expanded.
Back when the bosozoku were more active (even 2012 was interesting compared to now), there were certain main streets that had a near-constant police presence between midnight and 4am on Saturday nights. The police would use those big staffs to knock the bikers off of their rides sometimes.
I don't know where you're from but "casually fully expanded" sticks doesn't really sound so scary when police all have handguns, metal batons and tasers where I am.
Yep, in the UK the Police budgets are stretched so thin that pretty much nothing except for actual murders and violent attacks ever gets investigated. And I don't mean it in a "it will get investigated at some point" way - I truly believe that for example stealing a car in the UK(outside of London) right now is a crime without any consequence. All you're going to get from the Police is a case number so you can call your insurer, no one will ever look into it. And again, that's not really the police fault - it's the stupid austerity that has slashed the budgets so much that there are simply no investigative policemen left on the force except for the worst of crimes.
I kind of wonder about that, though. Japan has 198 police per 100000 citizens. The UK figure is 216 per 100000. And Tokyo and London both seem to have about the same number of police per capita working within their city limits.
How many more police would it take, I wonder, before London was considered as safe as Tokyo?
Well, that's the problem with getting averages though. London is relatively fine, there are issues but very broadly speaking there is enough officers there. The problems start outside - in Manchester/Leeds/Doncaster the numbers are so low that what I mentioned above happens daily. If it's "just" theft or burglary and no one is hurt forget about any investigation. Even if you have CCTV of it happening, the police just don't want it as no one would review it anyway.
Greater Manchester has a population of 2.8M, and a police force of 6237, meaning the number of police is 223 per 100000, which is higher than the UK average.
I think the real problem here is that the citizens of Japan police themselves, and the citizens of most western countries like the UK don't.
I remember a walking tour in Munich some years ago, the guide told us to watch for Munich police bc they were bored and looking for crimes to take on, given the lack of crimes.
No, please. I bought a "ticket" that wasn't actually a ticket (had to use the red box to "convert" it?) for a train and got an earful. Also walked into a Rewe with a bottle of water and the cashier was really displeased.
In the UK and some other EU countries, you'd just pay on the spot (either the fine or the ticket price). Some things aren't worth that much policing.
I suspect you bought a ticket that can be made active any time, so you could buy it in advance if you wanted. To make the ticket "active" you have to stamp it using the pillar thing with the automatic date stamp at the station. Common mistake, but understandable you got an earful because you might as well be pretending you didn't know how things worked and are actually just riding again and again using the same pretend-ticket.
Similar with bringing a bottle of a brand that the store sells into the store - how are they supposed to know if you brought it in or if you just took it in the store and opened it there on the way to the cash register? (which, by the way, is not super uncommon either and generally tolerated)
German police are not allowed to collect fines on the spot, it's a corruption prevention measure.
I've lived on an American military base with a crime rate so low that the military police spent months determined to track down some guy who robbed the liquor store because it was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages.
There can be a real downside to police officers overzealously looking for someone to bust just to have something to do.
I'm ok with the dog poop one. Cleaning up after your dog is easy, and if you're so lazy that you can't do it you deserve to have someone in authority ruining your week.
Yup; my girlfriend is a gardener and while she's fine with handling poisonous plants (there's a lot of those) she is NOT fine with (other people's) dog / cat poop - there can be parasites and other nasties in there that will make you blind or dead. The plants need to be consumed and/or prepared in some way in most cases.
True, especially when children are involved. I do not know what to do when I find stuff in my yard that I know the toddlers/kids will play with if they find it. Thankfully the fly exist.
When I was young if some guy picked up dog poop in a park and took it home in a bag he would have been locked up as crazy. Nowadays if you don't pick up dog poop in a park and take it home in a bag you're locked up as criminal.
Yeah, how horrible it is that people are now expected to pick up their trash and not leave piles of shit lying around where other people might step on them. What a world.
The city near me bans animal waste from landfill and composting. You're required to take it home and flush it. Signs in the parks issue that directive and quote the appropriate bylaw.
Me, where I walk my dog he squats in the ditch between the pile of bear scat and the dead raccoon carcass. We lack the delicate sensitivities of sophisticated city dwellers.
They are often disallowed as a result of dog owners not cleaning up after the dogs. Other considerations are whether horses are allowed in the park, if there is wildlife that is threatened by dogs, or if there are things like soccer fields that might be torn up by a dog.
> - Dogs off leash in dogs-allowed parks
Leash reactivity is real. Google it. Leaving your little Fluffy off-leash in an on-leash park is a recipe for disaster. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll probably be found liable if a fight starts out, even if the dog on leash 'starts it'.
> - Dog poop infractions
Good! Bag your poop. Carry it with you until you can dispose of it properly. And that doesn't mean using a private person's garbage without permission.
>Leash reactivity is real. Google it. Leaving your little Fluffy off-leash in an on-leash park is a recipe for disaster. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll probably be found liable if a fight starts out, even if the dog on leash 'starts it'.
I had this conversation in a park with another dog owner just last night. The park has two spaces - a developed area where dogs are required to be on a leash, and an undeveloped area with trails through tall grass where dogs are allowed to be off-leash as long as they are responsive to their owners.
He was sitting on a bench on the developed trail, with his dog on the ground next to him, with no leash. No surprise, his dog lunged at mine as we walked by, and he couldn't comprehend why I was upset that he didn't have a leash handy for his dog. It's incredibly frustrating that folk can be so selfish and short-sighted.
There are reasons for every ordinance. The enforcement resources dedicated to them are incredible, though, especially when neighboring municipalities can barely keep up with violent crimes short of murder.
Until you reach age 18 in the US you have very limited civil rights. Freedom of speech, assembly, bearing arms, due process, and privacy are restricted. On the up side for kids, the amusement park tickets are cheaper and the prisons are slightly nicer.
And in the US, parents would face criminal charges for things Japanese parents routinely do, like sending their kids to the store alone. Unfortunately the US is filled with plusungood sexcriminals (citation needed) and weapons (price of freedom) so we can’t do it in the land of freedom.
Charlotte, NC or Mecklenburg County curfew age was 16 and under when I was growing up.
Also the 17 year old age restriction for "R" rated movies is a suggestion. I hope Regal Cinemas as a business continues dying off for changing their policy to be 18+ when I was 17, and then reverting their policy back to 17 when I turned 18. My stepfather would buy a ticket, escort all of us into the theater, walk back out to the ticket box, demand a refund for his ticket, and leave us to watch. Silliest company policy ever.
The American convention is that the police are not a military force because we call them a different word. As such, they cannot impose martial law, regardless of what the law is or the means by which they enforce it.
You're free to vote into law such local ordinances and for local politicians who support such ordinances. You're also free to vote for politicians who will repeal such ordinances. I don't understand your apparent disdain...
You're free to vote into law such local ordinances
Well, it's not quite as cut and dry as that. There does seem to be some legitimate question on First Amendment right to peaceful assembly grounds. Much of the case law has generally upheld these ordinances, however it has shaped them so that municipalities have to be careful to construct the ordinances correctly.
It is a stupid cheap halfway enforcement because of parks at night being a good place for vice activities which leave unsavory evidence later (used syringes, condoms, booze bottles).
I know because that was a shift taken after a few incidents of prostitution at night and unsavory hazardous litter prompted the change.
The alternatives are obvious (open but larger patrols at night to make it unsuitable) but that is more expensive for what is a fringe activity.
The ordinances that close public parks after twilight are generally to provide cops with a pretext to confront anyone in the park who may otherwise have no-reasonable-suspicion opsec for their...
...sale or use of prohibited substances.
...prostitution.
...homeless campsites.
...public intoxication or underage drinking.
...pretentious indie filmmaking.
...spray-paint tagging.
...logging.
...poaching.
...dumping.
...lewd behavior.
While some municipalities were forced to close parks at night, due to actual evidence of these activities, so the cops could move in and roust anyone they find, others preemptively closed their parks as cargo-cult ritual, hoping to prevent those activities from occurring in the first place.
Are you suggesting we don't have that already? All the big tech companies that do anything with location already know your age and whether you're out after curfew or have a dog (for example), and Snowden revealed that the government (via PRISM) also has access to this information.
When I was young - before 18 - kids wound up in juvenile all the time for being out after curfew, which was 11 during the week and 12 or 1am on weekends. you were supposed to be allowed out to work a job, but folks got harassed nonetheless. There was no other crime other than being young and out past a certain time.
Now in Indiana, supposedly one is supposed to be allowed out with parental permission, but I don't know if it is like this in the rest of the country or if places have re-written their juvenile curfew laws to account for this sort of thing.
In addition, folks on house arrest or parole often have curfews as well.
You'd think they could come up with something constructive. Have the officers do community service among the residents while on the clock and in uniform. You'll have even less crime that way.
On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time. Most American military bases are pretty aggressive about policing traffic issues, and it's apparently all to the good.
They do things like place some crumpled car as a billboard somewhere prominent to remind you daily what your car might look like if you drive drunk, then post a count that gets updated daily "Days since last deadly accident" or something like that.
And on the base in question, we had on base housing. One of the duties of the police was to let you in your house if you locked yourself out accidentally. (I did once.)
But this article starts with a stake out actively trying to tempt someone to steal something. It's essentially entrapment, or not far from it.
That's not entrapment. At least in the US, entrapment has to pass two tests:
1. Was it a crime the suspect was unlikely or unwilling to commit otherwise? (The "subjective" test.)
2. Did the actions of officers cause a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime? (The "objective" test.)
In other words, entrapment is when the police actively cause somebody to commit a crime they wouldn't have otherwise committed in similar circumstances.
In the article, the police just left a case of beer inside a car. The police created a passive opportunity, but that's not enough for entrapment... the act of steeling that beer was entirely self meditated.
That sentence has two qualifiers. I still have two people telling me I'm wrong.
In my youth, I would have agreed that a thing should just not be touched if it's not yours because maybe they will come back for it. Someday.
I'm still inclined to generally err in that direction, but I'm less judgy than I used to be of people who would be inclined to feel that a perishable -- like beer -- left out in the open for days on end must be basically abandoned and up for grabs because people don't typically buy consumables like that and leave them sitting out for days on end.
It's not normal behavior. It was intended to be temptation. Whether it meets the legal definition of entrapment or not, it makes for a town I don't really want to visit. There's no telling how far down this slippery slope they will go to keep themselves entertained and prove their paychecks aren't simply a waste of money.
I raised two kids. I've thought quite a lot about such things. I think setting up a "test" of that sort to see who will fall for it isn't nice behavior and shouldn't be done, especially not if your real motive is merely because you are bored.
I don't understand how you think this way about ownership. If it's not yours and you don't enter into a transaction (the transaction can be implied in the case of give-aways) wherein the previous owner grants you ownership, then it stays not yours. Things in a car are pretty unambiguously not up-for-grabs to anyone who doesn't own the car.
I was raised to be extremely upstanding and responsible etc. But you can take that too far, which is why we have and need laws that cover when certain things end: statutes of limitations, laws declaring when property is deemed abandoned, etc.
Every state in the US has laws in place that spell out under what conditions the government or another party can claim your real estate. The local government typically claims it if you haven't paid your taxes in X amount of time and resells it. If it is mortgaged, the bank can claim it if you fail to pay for X amount of time.
States also spell out when a total stranger can file legal claim on your real estate. This usually involves them openly living there, getting their mail there and paying the utilities and the like for a number of years.
Most states require a period of between ten and twenty years. The most liberal states only require five years. The most conservative -- Texas -- requires 30 years.
Countries that don't have solid processes in place for returning seemingly abandoned real estate to use by allowing some other party to establish legal claim to it wind up having extremely thorny problems, including intractable poverty for large swaths of the population.
Problems with trying to establish clear legal ownership in countries with overly conservative laws or traditions in that regard is one of the biggest challenges faced by Habitat for Humanity. Lack of ability to readily and easily say "We don't think they are coming back for it, and if they do, too bad so sad, time's up" actively undermines a functional society far worse than the occasional petty crime (such as some swiped beer).
I'm personally excessively conservative about such things. But I'm old enough to recognize that different people draw those lines in different places and that people less conservative than me don't necessarily deserve to be viewed as bad actors. They certainly don't deserve to be tricked into committing a crime so that bored police officers have something to do.
Simple: you inform the police that you think that car has been abandoned, and you let them deal with it. You can't just jump-start it and drive away because you think it's abandoned.
Ownership is just a notion. It's a custom our society has invented, probably pushed by people who had things, and then tried to convince everyone that this was the norm.
In more tribal societies it's not uncommon that people have no notion of ownership, or that it's less transactional. People who steal who I have met generally believe that it's the fault of the victim to have left that item up for grab. Just to say that the notion is quite fluid between people.
I think most people in the places that I frequent have very similar training on customs pertaining to personal property and ownership as I do, and that differences in how they act on that training is less to do with different customs and more to do with allowing yourself to shape your moral framework to match your desires rather than the other way around.
I need help with this one since you have some experience.
School bus 6am with its blinking lights in Mountain View CA about 8 years ago my wife got pulled over for driving past (she slowed down but didn't stop and wait). So if this happened at 8 am it would have been kinda legit. This was at 6am where there are no kids outside, taking buses.
No. You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Perhaps a school started early because of a special event? Perhaps a driver in training was making his rounds with an empty bus? You can't know. Don't try to water down reasonable traffic laws because you think you know better.
It's not entrapment, because no decent driver would be tempted to ignore a school bus with its blinkers on.
> You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Suppose you're on a motorcycle, you come to a traffic light, and it's red. It's the middle of the night, there is no traffic, and the light will never turn green, because your motorcycle isn't heavy enough to trigger the sensor in the road.
This is a pretty common case. Do you need to leave the bike there until day comes and car traffic arrives to save you?
All traffic lights I've encountered that are triggered use magnetic triggers and work with bikes. Additionally their failsafe for night operation is to go into yield-traffic mode; the yellow light blinks, indicating that the intersection is no longer governed by the light but by the normal right-of-way. As a last option, you can trigger the pedestrian light manually by getting of your bike.
This is absurd; you so clearly have not ridden a motorcycle in California or maybe at all; the number of lights that aren't triggered by a motorcycle is quite large; so large that there is an accessories market for adding a "larger magnetic field" to bikes; getting off the bike is just asking for someone to run you over because they weren't expecting a pedestrian on the roadway (one of those roadways I can think of off the top of my head had a light that wouldn't trigger on a winding freeway off ramp; I was always fearful that a motorist would kill me at this particular light).
No, I haven't ridden motorcyles in California, since I live in Germany. We probably just have better traffic lights. They even trigger when I use my bicycle!
Why are you fearing being run over when walking along a red light?
You have better traffic lights then. Many US states have laws the specifically allow motorcycles to run red lights as long as they stop and wait a certain amount of time.
The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case. Most traffic laws have exemptions for dealing with a force majeure; either explicit or implicit by condoning any reasonable behaviour necessary to mitigate the problem.
You're not stuck in the school bus scenario unless the cops who put it there maliciously keep its blinkers on for an unreasonable amount of time until you do pull up again after stopping (which then might be classified as entrapment). rhacker's wife didn't stop.
> The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case.
So what? The argument I responded to didn't use any aspect of the school bus case. It was "You don't get to make the call. A stop sign means stop, so you have to stop."
And that argument is obviously bunk. A red traffic light also means stop; it is perfectly comparable to a stop sign.
It depends on the state, as a number of states have "safe on red" laws for motorcycles.
In the case of Virginia, motorcycles and bicycles can proceed through the red light after the light cycles twice (skipping their lane) or two minutes. They still have to stop. They still have to yield the right of way.
I have taken a school bus at 6am (on a Saturday, no less) to a regional school event the next state over that started at 9am. My old high school had a "Zero Hour" during weekdays that started at 7:05am for those who had to work after school to support their families, or other obligations like sports in the afternoon. Busses serviced these kids. Combine that with the fact that children are high risk to cross the street without looking both ways for oncoming traffic, and school busses (and only school busses) are traditionally painted yellow as an alarm to the community to be very careful around them as there is a good chance it is hauling children and exceptional caution is to be given.
Government property on a military base that isn't locked down/guarded is pretty much fair game since everyone will reallocate resources if they are mission critical...and everyone knows this so if you really want to keep your stuff you need it guarded.
Personal gear exempted from this rule since Joes typically don't steal from other Joes unless they enjoy painful retribution.
> On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time.
The stereotypes about boots buying Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Camaros and such on 21% interest rates are very real.
source: personal experience, former civilian military contractor
That would be nice. Unfortunately having less crime is not a goal of many police departments, DAs, prosecutors, prison guards and employees, bail bondsman, and basically the entire American criminal "justice" system. The more people they have to harass, the more money they can generate for themselves and all the sketchy for profit companies involved
The most common example I see of missed opportunities to improve safety over increase revenue is with traffic cops. They often hide, wait for a person to speed by, then pull out and give them a ticket. 10 minutes at least from the time they're pulled over, and who knows how long lying in wait. And it gets one car to drive safely for a day to a month after the incident.
Compare that to a situation I just saw on a major highway. One state trooper driving exactly the speed limit in the passing lane. For at least 20 miles, he kept a dozen cars at a safe speed. Not to mention preventing any other unsafe driving. Sure, it only lasted 20 minutes from my point of view, but if he just drove around for a few hours in plain sight, that's a lot of cars driving safely. Sadly, it doesn't generate revenue.
While there is significant overlap between driving lawfully and driving safely, they are not identical, so please do not use them interchangeably.
When a cop is doing that pace car thing, the safest thing to do is just get off that road, at least for a few minutes, because all of those drivers will be paying more attention to their legality than to their safety. For 20 miles, that example cop kept a dozen cars bunched up together, afraid to pass.
It is likely that a pace car cop will pull someone over eventually anyway, so don't even spin that wheel of chance.
There are different theories of what "safe driving" is, and the one you subscribe to will affect your opinion of pace car policing.
Generating revenue through fees and fines is excellent politics: you satisfy the voters' demands for both low taxes and robust services at the same time. The people who end up paying aren't happy, but they're not going to vote.
I don't recall/don't know. We had a 7.1 earthquake at some point as our latest Exciting Thing, and I think focus probably changed after that.
But for ten months, you would have thought they were looking for a mass murderer by the way they were blanketing the area with fliers looking for any leads in the case.
1) The OP to which you responded is confusing peacefulness with being civilised. Japanese are not particularly peaceful, but they are highly civilized. Much more so than western countries (in particular the USA seems to have rather low standards in terms of politeness and civilization), because the Japanese culture places much more value on such things than the various western countries.
2) You are conflating the disposition of the foreign policy of a country with the cultural accepted practices by the population of that country.
That is a common trend in all kinds of enforcement jobs. As the number of rule breakers gets lower, the rules get tougher to compensate. For police officers, security guards and bouncers it means that they will intervene in less and less serious offences. But it appears it works the same in other kinds of professions too. For example, dental health is improving around the world so dentists are spending more of their time with cosmetic issues because fewer patients have holes in their teeth. It's even the same in software development. What do you do when there are no major bugs to fix? You spend your time fixing all the minor irrelevant issues!
I think the empirical evidence is soundly against the idea of people being lazy. People will always find stuff to do because almost no one likes rolling their thumbs all day.
Why would you ever take on such a case? A matter were testimony stands against testimony? That would totally ruin your wonderful 99% conviction rate [0]. If a victim comes to you to report something like that, you better get her out asap by whatever means necessary. Just make sure you're not become part of the crime stats yourself... though that should be hard for you thanks to the necessary inside knowledge & contacts.
Anecdata: a female friend of mine was beaten up by her boyfriend (who was a pimp at a "soapy") and sent me pics of the bruises. I told her to go to the police. She said they would do nothing, something about her dad having a bad reputation (I didn't fully understand her Japanese text messages). I said go anyway and at least try, she's got clear evidence.
She did. They did nothing. And I've got several other similar stories from other women I've known. There is a LOT of unreported domestic violence and sexual assault in Japan.
The conviction rate is high because prosecutors have discretion over which cases to take to court, and there is no jury. The outcome of a bench trial is often predictable, and prosecutors will only take to trial cases they believe will succeed.
A large proportion of prosecutions in Japan rely on confessions, often obtained by duress. Even if only a small number of perpetrators (or innocent suspects) confess, taking only those cases to trail keeps the conviction rate high. The rate at which crimes are solved is somewhat lower -- less than 30% according to the article.
east asian countries have some of the lowest crime rates in general and some of the lowest crime rates when it comes to crimes committed against the opposite sex. you can correlate this with non-east asian countries by comparing the statistics of crimes in countries with lax immigration policies, south korea, vs countries with much stricter ones like Japan.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Rape-r...
us has 27 rapes out of 100k citizens vs 13.5 in south korea vs only 1 in japan. that 13.5 is the highest rate among east asian countries. but south korea has the largest foreign population as a percentage of their population out of all the east asian countries. so this stereotype being pushed that east asia countries "hides" their crimes towards females is clearly not true.
these anecdotal comments you see on the internet may be leaving out the most important detail. are the perpetrators even a native east asian? putting a non-east asian in east asia does not make that person stop committing crimes.
Worldwide, men are victimized at much higher rates, especially when the perpetrator is a stranger. But men also commit the vast majority of violent crimes. Most of these crimes end up being men hurting other men. Of particular interest is homicide statistics...
>A 2013 global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that males accounted for about 96 percent of all homicide perpetrators worldwide.
The wiki speculates that this could be due to biological differences, such as men being much more willing to engage in risky behavior.
Then shouldn't you look at whether the act violence involves two people of criminal background instead of looking at their gender?
Just because someone is subjected to violence from someone who shares some group characteristics doesn't mean it's not worth investigating or that he or she is somehow responsible for this violence.
A similar logic could be applied to black men on black men violence, to cite other answer that you got.
To push it further I what stops us from using the same reasoning to say that it's not worth investigating domestic violence in the case of same-race couple? In the end it's just whites hurting whites.
In terms of evaluating police effectiveness it could matter in some cases.
For example, the police probably can't do much to protect one drug dealer from another as both drug dealers are presumably trying to avoid the police (and the decision to legalise drugs is a political one not a police one).
The parent isn’t discounting male on male crime, in fact quite the opposite. He was responding to a comment about maybe men need more protection than women.
So your analogy to the police discounting black on black crime isn’t correct.
I'm not discounting male on male crime. The comment was supposed to be a confirmation of the parent's question. The other stuff came out because I learned it while reading that wiki and thought it was interesting, not because I think it's okay to ignore violence against men. (But I understand how it sounds like an implied "they deserve it" argument)
I believe they’re referring to Chikan which is estimated to have happened to 2/3 of women who ride the train in Japan and the act violates several Japanese laws.
I don't think this is true. There are 50 states, each with different laws and definitions of acts and crimes. I am not aware of any federal anti-harassment laws except for those governing workplaces, and even those do not consider all harassment to be illegal.
Perhaps they don't complain to the police because they are stoic and also prefer maximizing peace and order in their society rather than selfishly clutching their pearls over inconsequential annoyances. Japanese tend to have an intuitive understanding that sending an easily tolerated creep to jail will cause damage to everyone in his life including his employer and his family. They lack the impulsive blind urge for life-destroying revenge which you incorrectly believe everyone naturally possesses. Their culture is different but you seem hesitant to respect or recognize that. Japan Times is also widely considered by actual Japanese people to be racist anti-Japanese propaganda meant to confuse non-Japanese people into eventually insisting on various forms of heavy-handed intervention in their country. The article is written by a no-name pop music blogger and based entirely on his personal spin on a small handful of random tweets. It is probably mostly false.
You're merely whitesplaining how Japanese people should live. Japan will weigh the importance of various problems and solve them however they want at their own pace. They don't need your "help" and they never asked for it.
Almost every evening a couple of officers stand at the end of my street in Tokyo. There they can easily catch motorists making an illegal right turn. The rule exists only at certain times of day making it very hard for motorists to comply.
The police know this and just wait there like a bear fishing for spawning salmon.
It seems so pointless. If the right turn is really a problem then mark it in such a way as to make compliance obvious. If not, then just allow it and stop enforcement.
It's similar in Poland. It's against the law to cross the street on red light. Even if the street is completely empty of cars. So what police and city guard often do is hide somewhere in the bushes near universities and catch students trying to cross the street 'illegally'. It's an easy and safe way to bump up statistics and make some money off tickets. Unfortunately, in many cases, performance review for police is done on number of cases and money made off tickets rather than severity of crimes. As a result you have police bothering low hanging fruit in form of teenagers and avoiding the tough crimes like murderers and drug dealers.
I had one of these on my commute in Atlanta for a while. (Left turn) It was impossible to read the sign unless you came to a stop, at which point a cacophony of honking emerged from behind, whether it was the right time or not.
At some point they added a little yellow light to indicate it was legal to turn. I was a little awestruck.
I got a speeding in a school zone ticket and fought it because the points for that offence are high. The sign gave times the speed limit was in effect but I missed it and there were no other cars on the road so I didn't have that as a reference either. My lawyer argued that if the time of day was required knowledge there should have been a clock installed under the sign or some other visual alert. I got off.
You lived in or near NYC and didn't know that right-on-red is illegal in the whole city, at all times? There's no possible confusion there (except maybe near the borders of the outer boroughs, but Manhattan is an island so pretty hard to claim you didn't know you were in the city).
Back around 2003 or so I was in NYC visiting one of my fraternity brothers, and I made a right-on-red and he screams at me "Yooooooooo, what you doin?!?!" in his surprisingly thick NY accent for a guy originally from Shanghai. I had no clue that was illegal, it's not like they had signs stating it. I'm from Philly's NJ surburbs but I almost never drive up to NYC. Seems like a policy designed to easily ensnare out-of-town drivers.
That's why I said "or near". I figured it was common knowledge if you drive anywhere around the area. But it's true that it's not signed anywhere (that I know of), so if you're driving from farther away, it would be easy to get caught.
Drugs are highly illegal in Japan, yet there is no major drug crisis -- which seems to indicate that it's a cultural problem, and not related to enforcement and illegality. It could even be argued that extremely harsh punishments for drug related crimes could act as a deterrent.
Yes culture is a major part of it, which is why you need to compare similar countries. Among western countries those with more liberal drug laws tend to have less problems. Compare e.g. the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal with the US.
In my native Norway, punishment for almost anything is quite mild including drug related crime. Yet drug usage is much lower than in the US.
We are all more similar to the US than Japan, being all derived from European culture.
I don't know if there has ever been a major drug crisis, Japan has a long history of using cannabis for hemp based products but the use of it recreationaly wasn't really a concern domestically. Though the figures around drug use and overdose might be under-reported, even Japanese doctors will report drug use to the police thus deterring people from being honest.
The pressure to ban cannabis outright came from US influences when Japanese legislation was passed in 1948, meth infact is actually the most used illicit drug today.
Important to look at the whole picture. Even if we were to decriminalize all activity for all drugs, and assume 100% of drug crime inmates don't deserve to be there and should go free, it would nowhere near "empty" state and local prisons.
Also important to note that the vast majority of those incarcerated for drug crime are not in for possession, and even most people in jail for possession pleaded down from more serious charges.
They could crack down on the touts fronting tourist scams in areas like Shinjuku? I'm sure there's a lot of less visible crime that occurs (in all cities around the world, not just in Japan), but it's harder to solve so it gets overlooked for easier, more straightforward crimes that return a better bang-for-buck.
Touts (generally African immigrants) aggressively try to encourage you to come grab a drink with them, trying to be all friendly and acting shocked that you might not want to come with them when they want to shout you a drink in a bar. Once in the bar (who's in on it), the scam ranges from charging you way too much to buy ladies drinks, through to drugging and robbing you before dropping you home.
They'll never get physical with you beyond getting really close in your personal space and trying to shake your hand, but if you don't acknowledge them and walk past them then they often don't even do that. Their target is young white male tourists with lots of cash who wanna get drunk and party with ladies.
Tell you what. Check on the elderly sole survivors who don’t have anyone checking up on them. Bring some community to them. Help them with their emergencies, things they have difficulty executing.
It is a different job, but should it be? Why can't they be cross-trained?
In Vancouver, the police are on the front lines of helping the homeless / drug addicted / mentally ill population (there's a very large overlap between the three groups) access shelters and treatment.
I can't speak to Japanese police, but in America you wouldn't want our police doing any kind of social work. The police here are just bullies who have been given badges and guns, and are exactly the wrong personality for any job that requires compassion. Moreover, they're extremely trigger-happy and are well-known to shoot people who are having mental health episodes.
Police are kinds of social workers, crime and threats to life are intimately social matters. I think in most countries police would respond to suicide warnings. Police spend most of their time dealing with mentally ill and stressed people who they more often just talk to than arrest. Carrying out welfare checks on elderly people is exactly what they should be doing in Japan, besides preparing for the next earthquake.
Maybe for substantive interactions, but merely going on patrol and ringing doorbell/greeting elderly who have opted in to the service wouldn't require very much. If they are literally without things to do, this would be one of the least destructive things they could do.
Incentives matter. You must enforce this from the top down, that law enforcement will be measured by community engagement. Action and results will follow.
Being bombarded with Hong Kong news on Bloomberg [1], I am thinking perhaps Hong Kong took the other extreme. Having one of the lowest homicide rate in the world [2], the police is apparently turning against its citizen.
Initially I thought this was really good, and it really is.
I will say, some of the crimes investigated seem to be a waste of time and money.
for example
> In one recent case, she says, they arrested a group of people who had shared the cost of renting a car, deeming the arrangement an illegal taxi.
and
> One woman describes how five officers crowded into her cramped apartment after she reported her knickers being swiped from a clothesline.
I hope there has been a push to use this manpower in other, better ways (such as how the article mentioned they were better handling domestic abuse).
Reading the "police blotters" in my quiet town's weekly paper is one of my favorite traditions.
This week the police intervened when the wife played music the husband didn't like, so he unplugged the radio. The police did not charge anyone since there was no physical violence...
The Flathead Beacon has some good ones too. Recent: July 18: "10:08 a.m. A Kalispell resident called 911 because she had read in the police blotter that law enforcement rescued a ferret and she was curious if she could have it. Police informed her that they did not keep the ferret."
Uh oh there was another loud music related police blotter this week! Someone yelled at a driver playing loud music and punched his car, leaving a dent. Both parties were charged with disorderly conduct.
I don't want to create a new account to read an article? Is there any other option to read this article?
I know one could say that if I don't want to create an account like the website wants, then I have no right to read the article. Yes, I understand that. I respect the website's owners' right to enforce access to the article however they please and I am okay to not read the article if there is truly no other way to read it without creating an account.
The article is missing a very important answer: do people get discriminated in the system after jail or prison time ? how fast do system organize court for a recently arrested “criminal”? These are realy important to judge the actions of the police.
The funniest thing I saw in recent memory was some Japanese tourists (in the US) break a law.
They brought a bag lunch of sushi to the zoo, and sat down as a family to eat it at a picnic table. Shortly after they started eating their sushi, the parents proudly started drinking 24oz cans of Sapporo.
Yes, the Japanese tourists were violating American drinking laws by drinking in public!
(And, yes, I know that what they did is perfectly legal and culturally appropriate in Japan!)
I don't know if it's due to geolocation, but I don't seem to get paywalls on the economist (just a short ad banner for their subscription). Have you tried deleting your cookies? On Firefox, right click on the webpage, View page info > Security > Clear cookies and site data (this clears most paywalls of the "limited amount of articles" type). Alternatively it could be something that is blocked by an extension. μo reports that it blocked 33 requests from 24 domains, and then Privacy Badger tagged an additional 16 requests as trackers, of which 13 were either blocked or restricted to single session (pretty bad numbers).
You can quickly reload the page, and stop it before the JS for the paywall loads (esc on pc) The HTML loads but not the js that implements the paywall.
> "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."
> "In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."
A write-up of working in Japan as a non-japanese interested me because of the socialized concerns in the community like banks: a small town banker in Japan feels personally bound to you, and may invest in you, but you need to accept their guidance on spending: Do you need the computer, or is a bicycle a better choice for you with this disposable income: Can you afford the rent in a place of good repute because living in this bad place will affect your longterm credibility which affects your debt/risk ratio to me as a banker. Wow. Imagine US or British people having their bank manager say "I won't lend you for that jetski until you clean up your act and live healthy"
In some ways, but it would re-inforce the stereotype of conformance. Hard to be an outlier, when your bank manager polices your behaviour. You have to want the Japanese social cohesion a LOT to go there, and remember the cultural ties which favour this also permitted warlords to rape China and Korea. In other ways Japan is pretty harsh: I'm told childbirth is unpleasant compared to many western cultures and the inequality wired into society concerns me.
But I can see upsides, sure. (in a totally different economy and back in the 1980s securing my first home lone in Australia with my partner) I actually liked knowing my bank manager was a person who understood my drives and motivations. The shame was he was late stage career, retired and was replaced by a robot functionary with different KPI.
This is kinda what the US was like up until the 1960s except you had to be white, male, straight, not Italian, Irish, or Polish, well educated and of good standing in your community (read: Christian, but preferably not Catholic).
Basically it sounds good until you realize that kind of power starts to self select for the kind of people it wants to succeed.
The 1960s was very long past the point where being something other than a WASP would keep you from the height of power. It sure as hell wouldn’t keep you from getting a loan if it wouldn’t keep you out of Congress, the Senate or the Governor’s mansion.
Kabukicho has a lot of very expensive girls bars, but that $600 you didn't realize you spent wasn't a crime… probably. Minami-senju looks more like the Tenderloin.
Quality if life seems better everywhere when you are a tourist. I think people in the USA work crazy hours and take no vacations. How does Japan compare?
>I think people in the USA work crazy hours and take no vacations.
You may think that but it's far from universal, including in the tech industry. [ADDED: The US does rank fairly low on average on the amount of vacation people take but Japan is as low or lower.]
The people/times when I seen crazy hours worked are those doing paperwork or working on a death march for some project they didn't think when accepting it.
If you have your income generated by something other than participating in the salaryman culture, sure. But I'll take my worklife without a serving of karoshi.
Is it better though? You still have salaryman culture in the US, and crazy work hours. But zero guarantee with regards to benefits, and the employer has zero loyalty to you.
I spent a few years in Tokyo. Work hours were long, but there was strong morale and espirit de corps among my team. As a young person, it was bearable.
In Silicon Valley, hours were also long, but with none of the pride or loyalty I saw in Japan. For example, a manager would dump a huge task on my lap at 4:00pm, expect it done by the next morning, and then promptly leave me for the day. Eventually I learned how to defend my time, but I was a sucker for longer than I'd like to admit.
I'm in Sacramento now, and the vibe is different. The machine doesn't love me, but expectations are reasonable. Life is pretty great outside the office.
So it all depends on location, workplace, etc. The same is probably true in Japan.
For what it's worth, I have a Japanese spouse, and we could easily choose to live in either country. We choose the US for a variety of reasons. It's not an easy decision though, because Japan is a very nice country in a lot of ways.
A lot of the reasons to stay in America are personal.
* Compared to my in-laws in Japan, my parents here in the US are younger, more able, and far more supportive in general. We're getting way more help with our kids here than we would in Japan. We're getting more financial support. It's difficult to admit but it's a very simple truth.
* I have an older brother on the autistic spectrum who greatly benefits from having me nearby. And I'd probably need to take up his care if something happened to my parents, so it makes sense to be settled in the US.
* Our kids are biracial. Their social lives would probably be more difficult in Japan. Meanwhile, that's almost the norm where we live in California.
* My career prospects are far more open in the US. You definitely feel the "gaijin glass ceiling" when you're working in a Japanese company. This may be changing today. But it was very true back in the mid-00s.
* Likewise, my wife's career prospects are more promising in the US too. It's very difficult to get a salaried, high-paying job in Japan, especially as a woman, and especially as a person reentering the job market in middle age. That's not easy in America either, but not impossible like Japan. It would be a massive shame for her mind and education to go to waste. Japanese society is fucking this up badly.
* Today's Japan does not smile upon children. If you take your kids to a restaurant, or take them on the train, or really try to do anything with them in public, then grit your teeth. You're going to be surrounded by old people everywhere, and many will be shooting you evil glares. To simply have kids is to disrupt the harmony. I've literally seen public parks get shut down because old people living across the street couldn't tolerate the sound of kids laughing. This isn't specific to my having half-breed kids; I hear the same from almost everyone. We actually know a lot of Japanese families (several dozen) who are staying in America mostly for this reason, planning to go back after their kids grow up.
I loved living in Japan as an unencumbered young person. There are many things that Japan gets really right, like big city life, that's almost universally terrible in the US. When we go visit Japan, we come back kind of disgusted by America: there's trash everywhere, food is gross, certain neighborhoods are unsafe, every other person is obese, etc. Still, considering the above, the scales tip in favor of the US for us.
>Today's Japan does not smile upon children. If you take your kids to a restaurant, or take them on the train, or really try to do anything with them in public, then grit your teeth.
Maybe very small children. But in Japan, kids are pushed to walk themselves to school around 7 years old or so. Here in the US, parents would be arrested for that, and in a lot of places kids aren't allowed to be outside unsupervised at all.
>That's not easy in America either, but not impossible like Japan. It would be a massive shame for her mind and education to go to waste.
Aren't there a fair number of foreign companies now operating in Japan? This might be a possible solution to this for some people.
>Compared to my in-laws in Japan, my parents here in the US are younger, more able, and far more supportive in general. We're getting way more help with our kids here than we would in Japan.
I thought it was much more common in Asian cultures for grandparents to help with the kids. In fact, looking at many of the home plans in Japan, I noticed that many houses are specifically designed so that a younger couple with kids can live with their parents; the parents get their own floor or side of the house, to provide some privacy to both sides, but it's very easy to go from one side to the other. In America, people just don't live near their parents much any more because people (I'm talking college-educated people here, like the HN crowd) move around the country so much for work.
> Maybe very small children. But in Japan, kids are pushed to walk themselves to school around 7 years old or so. Here in the US, parents would be arrested for that, and in a lot of places kids aren't allowed to be outside unsupervised at all.
My kids are 6 and 4, so this has been our experience. We're not alone. In Japan, you're not even allowed to take your kids to the park supervised in a lot of places now, unless your kids just sit on a bench and finger their phones. No fun is allowed.
> Aren't there a fair number of foreign companies now operating in Japan? This might be a possible solution to this for some people.
It's more possible in some lines of work than others. Don't forget we're talking about a woman. Sexism is deep in Japan. Why deal with all of that when chances are so much more accessible elsewhere?
> I thought it was much more common in Asian cultures for grandparents to help with the kids.
I'd bet this is usually true, but it just doesn't apply in our case. My family in the US is super close and awesome. Her family in Japan is not.
I'm not making excuses for why we don't live in Japan. Like I said, we have papers and we could return tomorrow. We could make it work. But our lives in the US are good. There's no great reason to leave.
>My kids are 6 and 4, so this has been our experience. We're not alone.
Everything I've read about Japan says that kids routinely walk themselves to school, take public transit all over the city by themselves, etc.
However, this is of course talking about kids who are older than 4 or 6, probably more like 7-8+. I haven't read anything about what parenting 4-year-olds is like there, just that your typical 10-year-old is quite independent, unlike here in the US where you will really get arrested in some places if your 10yo is at the local park alone, or in other places the cops will bring him back home and give you a lecture about stranger danger.
>Don't forget we're talking about a woman. Sexism is deep in Japan. Why deal with all of that when chances are so much more accessible elsewhere?
That's a pretty easy thing to answer for anyone: emigrating is hard, and it's a really hard thing to leave your home country and culture you grew up in and try to make it someplace else. This is true for any human. It's especially true if you're going to a country where the language and culture are especially alien to you. (i.e., emigrating from UK to US isn't that hard; we have the same language and similar culture. Emigrating from Japan to US is a huge, huge change.)
On top of that, other countries have their problems too. US is an extremely violent country with a 3rd-world-level murder rate, an almost non-existent public transit system, a shockingly expensive healthcare system, and a rather low ranking on any quality-of-life index compared to other industrialized nations.
>I'd bet this is usually true, but it just doesn't apply in our case.
Of course, individual experiences can be very different than national norms. It's too bad her family isn't more involved.
I'm not sure how to respond. I'm speaking from my lived experience here.
My wife is an ethnic Japanese citizen who grew up in Japan and speaks Japanese perfectly, with a Japanese college education and strong Japanese work experience in her field. It's still far easier for her to get a good job here in the US. This isn't some theoretical assumption. This happened!
She's lived here for a combined thirteen years. She speaks excellent English. We've already moved back and forth between US and Japan a couple times. Emigration is a massive PITA but it's not like a soul-altering, deep-grit odyssey for us at this point. Not sure what this has to do with sexism.
Yes, young kids commute to school alone in Japan. They're also not allowed to have fun, make sudden movements, or whisper in public without scorn. It's not a healthy environment.
Where exactly is this "scorn" coming from? I've been to Japan, but of course only as a tourist; I didn't grow up there or live there. But I did see kids, in groups, aged 10+, hanging out together and generally having fun. It looked like maybe they had just gotten out of school, as they were all wearing school clothes. They certainly weren't looking unhappy, or refraining from sudden movements or talking, in fact they were quite animated. This was in pretty open, public places however, like the big crowded outdoor markets.
What I did notice about Japan, compared to the US, was that it seemed like I could do just about anything there as long as it wasn't illegal. I might get stares of disapproval, but it seems like the society has a strong attitude of minding one's own business, and a pretty severe case of non-confrontationalism (sorry, I made that word up) whereas here in the US you can get nasty comments from random people if they don't like something about you, especially in the "friendly" South. So there seems to be a strong culture of conformity enforced by silence and expecting people to know social norms, but then you see some people acting out in various ways, like dressing really crazily, but everyone just ignores it. Of course, there's also the subways where no one talks (very unlike the US), but I can see the reason for that due to the crowding and it's actually pretty nice IMO, as people on the DC Metro get really loud at times.
Of course emigration isn't a soul-altering odyssey for you, because you're a couple with one person from each country. Getting adjusted to any country is 100x easier when you're married to someone who grew up there. Try moving to Congo or Saudi Arabia and see how easy you find that trek.
None of this has anything to do with sexism, to address your comment, I'm just talking about what I've seen and read about kids, and trying to understand your experience. From everything I see about raising kids in the US, it's pretty horrible, and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do it, though it probably varies a lot from place to place. I grew up in the US of course, but it absolutely was not like it is now; when I grew up, kids could and routinely did roam around without adults, but that was decades ago before helicopter parenting became the norm.
>When we go visit Japan, we come back kind of disgusted by America: there's trash everywhere, food is gross, certain neighborhoods are unsafe, every other person is obese, etc.
This is exactly how I feel when I return from the Japan. The same goes for coming back from Switzerland or Scandinavia. If more Americans traveled, they would probably be more upset about how terrible the US is compared to any other industrialized nation.
That certainly depends on what part of the US you're talking about. In my experience in the south, working overtime is very rare. Most people have families and are out of the office by 5. Silicon valley might be a different story.
By virtue of a more rapidly increasing population, maybe.
The interesting thing about Japan is the poverty level is estimated to be relatively high. In general we see that crime scales with poverty, but not as much there. That should be subject to more research.
Well that’s a stupid article. The operative words: “Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income”. In an absolute sense, Japan has no poverty.
History will ultimately be the judge, but I truly worry about the sustainability of many things in the US.
I grew up in a rural area of New York, which is basically rotting away. I worked on a farm as a kid that was continuously operated since the 1680s that is suddenly not viable.
Life is great for my family, thanks to good education, luck, and good decisions, but I worry about my kids’ future.
If your kids going to be a farmer and only a farmer, I think it's quite right to worry about it. Innovation is not constrained in one country - whatever happens elsewhere will be felt, the only difference is where the benefits end up.
I don't know if that's completely true. Aren't many (most?) of the organized crime groups historically immigration-based in the US? The American Mafia was started by Italian immigrants in NYC, MS-13 by El Salvadorian immigrants in Los Angeles, etc.? I mean, we have MS-13 problems even here in Washington DC due to the large El Salvadorian population.
I would wager if Japan allowed as many El Salvadorians into Japan as made it into the US, they would start having MS-13 problems too (but maybe not; Japan authorities pretty much decimated the Yakuza last I read).
The yakuza is still alive and well.[1] They keep a lower profile now than during Japan's boom times, much like the mafia in the US today. I dunno about MS-13 per se, but I've definitely run into an outsized share of sketchy central and south American immigrants in nightclubs in Osaka. A Canadian DJ friend of mine (long-time Osaka resident, like 10+ years) cautioned me to avoid them. They had a reputation for violence, stabbings, etc...
[1]NSFW Google search: "site:tokyoreporter.com yakuza". TokyoReporter is my favorite English-language Japan news source; they cover all the seedy shit like ex-porn stars getting busted for drugs.
I wouldn't rush to dismiss tribalism as a bad thing for society. Homogeneity is like any tradeoff: upsides and downsides. Japan is as homogenous as they come.
I honestly don’t know why police don’t first and foremost do social work, helping out their communities (visiting elderly, helping folks with disabilities, helping collect data, repair or fix ailing public facilities, etc) instead of putting them in jail and fining them. Call me crazy, but what a wonderful world that would be... if people saw a cop and thought “fuck yeah, this person is here to help me,” rather than “find or create a situation in which I’ve done something wrong and will be punished.”
We are all long-term pretty fucked as long as we have institutions devoted to our worst selves. As another commenter said, we need to incentivize better behavior if we want it...
When I was a child I read picture story books which taught me that this was the purpose of police - to help citizens. They showed old ladies being helped across the road by humble bobbies and exhorted me to seek the nearest policeman if I ever became lost.
In adulthood it didn't take too many encounters with actual police to realise that they don't see their purpose the same way AT ALL.
Parents should be more responsible and teach their kids about police. One bad encounter can be the end of their child's life. Letting them read things like this without providing a realistic perspective is quite irresponsible, IMO. I grew up in a society where no one was deluded like this about the role of police. We all knew they were evil and out to hurt or kill us. Those lessons paid off after I moved to America. Here the cops are just as bad but many people kid themselves into thinking they are not. That's a delusional society.
Police are internal security. They are there to protect those with property from those that do not. They rarely are able to prevent crime, and only lazily follow up afterwards unless a fellow officer is insulted or injured, in which case they are completely aggressive.* Given the level of investment, this entire system is totally unable to deliver justice or peace, it just batters the less fortunate.
We need fewer police, less segregation, and more wealth distributed to more people. When people don't need to struggle to get what they need, they trust their neighbors and productive social relationships are possible.
But if the police also helped the local community, then they'd be perceived in a much more friendly manner. These positive feelings could make policemen seem like pillars of communities again.
While quite possible, it’s important to point out that police are tools of the state. The areas that the State considers respect worthy get better treatment. The police have thus been wielded for pretty inhumane purposes; and we need to view them with a very honest and critical eye.
This would help with all the PTSD that cops face. The job is hard. This would humanize the trouble by reducing the stress in their work environment. Please keep advocating this idea, since it's novel but probably very effective to help society mend it's issues with law enforcement.
First and foremost, their job is to police society on behalf of whoever is in charge here. They don’t answer to just anyone, they answer to the people that sign their paychecks, and while on some level that might be you or I when we pay our taxes, it is actually the local Chief of Police, who in turn is paid by the Mayor or whatever the local executive body is, who in turn has his own ambitions which are balanced against the interests of his constituents. But since he is only human, his ambitions generally win out whenever and however possible.
In every city in every century, you’ve had an upper class, a working class and a dissatisfied class. Some members of the upper class might be less than satisfied because they’re not the mofo in charge today. Some members of the working class might be dissatisfied because they just got stiffed by whoever writes their checks and they went home to find another guy in bed with their wife. In either case, the police might be a nice cudgel to have, but it isn’t always the best one for the job at hand.
Members of the dissatisfied class are professionally dissatisfied for lack of any other profession. The police are around to deal with them and any dodgy looking outsiders that wander into town. If a rich aristocrat has a well paid job for them or their good buddy from the bakery down the road needs help teaching an adulterous woman and her last night’s partner a lesson, the police are absolutely there to help “you”. Otherwise their business is that of policing society and enforcing some codes of conduct. They might be common things that people do, don’t do and their common expectations as to what happens when they do or don’t do those things; or codified on some stone tablets for all of civilization to see; or simply a canonical list of vices and virtues. Either way, it’s a good stick to beat the dissatisfied with and someone needs to do it.
Social work isn’t police work, police work is preventing the complete breakdown of society by the judicious application of the State’s monopoly on violence over a sufficiently large area.
That sounds amazing. Here in provincial NZ officers won't even respond to a car crash or minor violent crimes, because they're so understaffed. I can go a month without seeing them. I have zero faith in police to deal with the large anti-social behaviour here, and it's made me dislike having to be in public.
If you're a criminal come to NZ. You can rob any shop you want, no one has guns, and police departments won't bother with you even if the victims have your face on camera.
This is such hysterical hyperbole I don't know where to start.
Where do you live that you fear for your safety in public? Even in Otara you won't run into trouble in public.
Shop owners not having guns is a good thing. The last thing we need is an escalating arms race between shop owners and criminals. Violence begets violence.
This is such hysterical hyperbole I don't know where to start.
Considering you don't know where you live, how do you know what I am saying isn't true?
Where do you live that you fear for your safety in public? Even in Otara you won't run into trouble in public.
Have you lived in Otara? Or have you just been there a few times, found you weren't immediately beaten up, and decided it was an alright place?
If you're an Aucklander I consider Auckland CBD a pretty safe place, big police presence. But even then you have endemic violence problems, ie asian students getting mugged in that park outside Auckland Uni.
Shop owners not having guns is a good thing. The last thing we need is an escalating arms race between shop owners and criminals. Violence begets violence.
Petrol station and dairy robbings are common, usually for cigarettes. People would absolutely think twice if they were armed and could legally defend themselves.
> If you're a criminal come to NZ. You can rob any shop you want...
And yet just today the NZ Police were touting how they are now identifying and nabbing 2/3rds of dairy (translation: convenience store) robbers. Doesn't sound like the best odds to me.
Publice service jobs (includes police) are very competitive in Japan because they have good pay, benefits, and working conditions. Ergo, there is no shortage of police because it is a desirable job.
Why does the state hire so many, though? I bet most countries would easily get more qualified applicants but rather choose to downsize the police force when crime rates decrease. Which makes total sense.
I think most jobs in Japan exist merely to keep the population busy, in the interests of "stability". Unemployed or otherwise "chaotic" life situations are undesirable. The Japanese corporate world isn't really healthy enough to absorb any excess labor, so the public sector takes up the slack.
Just walk into any Japanese business or local government office and the giant stacks of documents and rows of office ladies will make any knowledge-worker have an aneurism at the obvious inefficiencies. But very little (outside of the car industry, maybe) is about being efficient. It's about being "stable". Not that I agree with this at all, it's just my cynical take based on the interactions I've had.
I don't quite understand this attitude. Sure there are inefficiencies but the end result is still often better and faster service than in similar offices in other places of the world.
Germany for instance, if city hall in Berlin had to deal with the same number of cases per day that city halls in Tokyo have to deal with they would conpletely shut down.
My takeaway from your post is "German bureaucracy is even less efficient than Japanese bureaucracy".
Let me clarify: yes, the turn-around time and quality of service is good in Japan. But the input costs are very high manpower AND absolutely astronomical paper consumption. My assertion is that at the very least the consumables costs could be reduced, in the long run, by switching to things like fillable PDF forms, with little or no degradation in quality of service. Japan is a perfect place for PDF forms because there is already a form for almost everything, and there really don't seem to be "edge cases" too often. I should be able to fill in my information at a kiosk and the document gets digitally signed by the reviewing employee (because the government workers should have CACs with digital certificates), and it goes into a file server.....instead of onto a bookshelf. Then you also don't need to allocate manpower to manually transport boxes of documents once a season to the "head office" either.
No, I think Germany'a bureaucracy is quite efficient along the dimensions you describe, like PDF forms, but it still is generally a longer wait, and a lot of unhelpful unresourceful, unmotivated, personell. But on paper they appear more efficient.
My point was that just because Japanese processes look inefficient they aren't necessarily so.
You can get a lot of stuff printed out and processed by the Tokyo city halls in a matter of minutes (they look up your details in a DB). They also have a lot of paper piles, but that hasn't affected my experience.
There's still a lot to improve in Germany too. From a Northern European perspective the German bureaucracy is archaic and inefficient, though points for thoroughness. The main complaints would be
1. Lack of Internet services. This may be hindered by lack of national strong authentication? I'm not German national so not sure what the pain point there is.
2. Paper based. The paper is the document, instead of being a representation of a fact. I'm not used to storing paper. I assume this is also at least a partial reason to the astronomical side costs of apartment purchases.
3. Lack of communication between authorities. Granted, this may be by design as a privacy guarantee. Regardless, taking a paper from one place to another is inefficient. I'm used to, say, banks reporting my capital income to the tax office without me having to work as a useless mediator.
But Germany is the epitome of efficiency, no? That's what I meant. Japan always gets a bad rep but Germany should too. At least in Japan the staff is typically nice (excluding the immigration office as the only exception I know of).
Germany somehow is indeed seen as efficient. There's some truth there, in comparison to Southern Europe at least -- everything works and corruption isn't an issue -- but it's by no means a gold standard. I've started to call it "German thoroughness" instead.
The New Zealand police force are beholden to their benefactors, and thus need to focus their efforts on their goals rather than social ones. ACC being the largest contributor is the reason why they spend so much time on policing the road, and so little time on criminal behaviour.
I assume it's because I pointed out shop owners not having guns makes them easier targets.
Also a lot of wealthy americans tend to fetishize New Zealand as a place they can 'escape' to every time a republican becomes president - so maybe this ruins the image they have of it.
Funny isn't it, that they think they would be welcome because they vote blue... New Zealanders tend to consider Americans undesirable immigrants regardless of their political beliefs.
If a crime occurs and people don't even bother reporting it because minor incidents never get looked to, how does that show up in the crime solving statistics?
A police whistle shrieked, and I turned and saw a police officer absolutely booking it through the crowd, shoving through people, shouting at some perpetrator.
My American-cultured brain thought, "This is it, someone's about to die." It seriously freaked me out.
I watched, and he caught up to... a guy on a bike. It was a no-biking zone. He gave the guy a ticket.