Diese Kluft zwischen Statistiken und Stimmung – das nennt die japanische Polizei Taikan Chianoder das wahrgenommene Sicherheitsgefühl der Öffentlichkeit – hat sich landesweit ausgeweitet. Umfragen zeigen, dass trotz historisch niedriger Kriminalität immer mehr Menschen sagen, dass sie sich in ihrer eigenen Nachbarschaft unsicher fühlen. Dieses Phänomen wird zum Teil durch den Bevölkerungsrückgang und nachlassende Bindungen in der Gemeinschaft sowie durch einen ständigen Strom oft irreführender Social-Media-Beiträge und Berichterstattung in den Mainstream-Medien, die bestimmte Verbrechen reißerisch darstellen, angeheizt und ein Gefühl der Gefahr erzeugt, das über die Realität hinausgeht.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/01/12/japan/society/japan-safety-security-crime/
10 Kommentare
Long article but worth reading in entirety.
News making safe societies feel dangerous, very obvious. 24 hour news and doom chasing blows everything out of proportion even if the stats say it’s the safest point in history.
Stats mean nothing if you FEEL something and it’s why the right wing win. It’s the same everywhere, Social media and the news corps need reigning in
The subheading to the article is the obvious tl;dr:
>Sensationalized news coverage and inflammatory social media posts are making the Japanese more fearful than they need to be.
Haven’t read it yet and will update my comment when I do, but my personal guess is that since most Japanese people never leave and go to another country, or even talk in depth with a foreigner about the safety/experience in other countries, the baseline is simply different. If safety is all you’ve ever known, any slight threat feels huge.
Japan is safe because nothing unexpected is allowed to happen. People don’t fear crime; they fear standing out, being judged, or misreading the air.
A culture that avoids conflict calls that safety.A culture that avoids honesty calls that harmony. How is a country that bathes together so shy around each other?
The discomfort around foreigners isn’t fear of harm. It’s discomfort at disruption. They expose how much effort it takes to keep everything smooth.
Harmony depends on everyone knowing the script, and anyone who hasn’t memorized it feels like a threat. The yankii on loud bikes, the perverts, those are already in the script. The script has simply been updated to include foreigners.
You’re very safe here, as long as you stay invisible. The only real danger is when the police decide you did something serious. After that, due process is thin at best.
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First worlders usually do not have a realistic baseline to compare with
One of the ladies at work moved houses because her house got egged and it made her feel unsafe. So I guess threshold for that stuff is just lower here anyway (everyone knows that already)
When I was in Japan last summer there was video footage on the news of a brazen kidnapping of a grown man. Hard to tell people that they should feel safe because statistically they are, when they see a crime taking place that they would have thought unimaginable a decade ago.
Doesn’t mean that they are any less safe. Back in the 90s I remember a guy riding a bike around and stabbing random people, and poisoned drinks left in vending machines. It’s just hard for statistics to make people feel safe when the news is showing them crazy video.
Japan was safe. It got less so post covid
Because of racism.