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Govt. White Paper: ‘Law Abiding Spirit’ in Decline

Written By: guyjin on November 21, 2009 One Comment

According to figures released in a recent government white paper, Mainichi reports, the law abiding spirit of the Japanese people appears to be in decline. Japan has long been proud of its record of relatively low violent crimes and high success rates of solving and prosecuting crimes. But recent figures suggest that these trends are all falling off, as Japan becomes an increasingly more dangerous and less ‘law-abiding’ place to live.

The incidence of random attacks (14 last year) is by no means at a level to suggest that it is no longer safe to walk the streets. But the rate at which this figure has increased in recent years, from 3 cases in 2004, 6 in 2005, 4 in 2006 and 8 in 2007, does give some pause. Coupled with this, the white paper also shows that the arrest rate is also down, from above 50% for most of the second half of the last century, to the low 30s in recent years (it even dipped as low as 19.8% in 2001, but has stabilized slightly to around 31.6% last year).

According to Mainichi, the National Police Agency Commissioner General Ando Takaharu had the following to say on Nov 6 as an explanation for these declines:

“It appears that Japanese people’s high law-abiding spirit and social bonds such as those in schools and regional communities, which had supported the country’s high standards of public order, are declining”.

There are no doubt a number of reasons for any decline in the law-abiding spirit in Japan, and it must be noted again that things are by no means at the point of panic. However the trends do appear to show that things will continue to get worse unless something is done to reverse these trends.

A lot has been said and written over the last decade or so in particular about the declining social ties throughout Japan. Once upon a time, everyone knew everything about their neighbors. But those days appear to be long gone, especially in more urban settings. How often we hear the neighbor comment on television that ‘he was such a quiet person, and kept to himself’, in relation to a suspect in a major crime… There was a time where such behavior would have made the neighbors concerned, but these days it is pretty common. I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing – I happen to appreciate privacy myself – but it has led to difficulties for police, who in the past have relied a great deal on help from the public in solving crimes.

I remember several years ago sitting in the home of an older couple in a small town in Iwate-ken, when the local police officer came knocking on the door. He was invited inside and offered some tea, and the hostess then proceeded to peel an apple for him, as he asked her if she had noticed anything suspicious around the neighborhood. This wasn’t a particular investigation, and the couple that had been visited were not particularly close to the policeman. This was just something akin to a policeman ‘doing his rounds’, and ‘getting the lay of the land’. Apparently he did it every 6 months or so, visiting many of the homes in the area to chat and exchange information. In any other place in the world, this may have seemed intrusive, and even ‘police-state-ish’…. but in this small town in rural Japan it just seemed nice and quaint.

The days of such anecdotes seem to be in decline, as police are busier and people are more guarded and private than ever before. Again, I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. I believe that privacy is one of the more important hallmarks of freedom, and this should not be artificially limited in any way. But this is the problem that police now face. They have no course to limit the privacies of the people, but this means that they need to find new ways of solving crimes, and new ways of interpreting the information that they find.

I won’t take much space here to discuss another important aspect to this so-called decline in law abiding spirit, but it is worth noting nonetheless. That is the attitudes that are being taught and accepted among children. Children are taught by the actions of their parents and teachers, and other authority figures around them. They are taught whether or not they will value authority, whether or not they will take responsibility, and whether or not there are morals. Too often in today’s society I feel that adults fail to adequately teach these things to children, and the result can be somewhat anarchistic in certain ways. Lack of discipline, lack of clear moral guidance, and a lack of expectation of good behavior has left many children ‘dazed and confused’. Of course, this is not a purely Japanese phenomenon. But it is nonetheless an increasingly common situation for children, and I have no doubt that this is impacting any decline in keeping the laws and morals of society.