That gap between statistics and sentiment — what Japanese police refer to as taikan chian, or the public’s perceived sense of safety — has widened nationwide. Surveys show that even as crime remains historically low, more people say they feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, a phenomenon fueled in part by demographic decline and fraying community ties, as well as a constant stream of often misleading social media posts and mainstream media coverage that sensationalizes certain crimes, creating a sense of danger that outpaces reality.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/01/12/japan/society/japan-safety-security-crime/
17 Comments
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.
The only real danger is the random stabbings in trains, hospitals and other places that seem to happen once in a while.
Tourists?
Japan has been living in a bubble for a very long time. People that have been here for 10-20 years will know that japan has changed a lot in the last 10 years. One of the biggest change is the mind set of “japan as a service country”. Japanese businesses are catering directly to foreign company/tourists simply because of how rich many countries have become and japan has remained stagnant. New graduate can not get away with applying to a big corp by only speaking japan, conversational english or even chinese is the base line. Imo, some japanese people feel that change in society of having to cater to foreign interests/corp/tourists as this encroaching force into their culture. Not wrong, but its not the tourists/foreigners fault. Its the mismanagement of japanese economy by japanese politicians.
Japan isn’t safe. Crime just doesn’t get reported.
I mean the economy and spending power of the yen is awful and Japan has been flocked by tourists so our streets and lives have been heavily influenced by this. Things look very different than they did years ago and a lot of the population has not caught on so it is shocking. Pair this with the break from all outside visits to Japan during the pandemic and now the country looks like a night and day difference.
While statistics show crime-wise nothing has changed, there has been a very heavy societal change that makes many feel anxious and uncertain about our surroundings.
This is happening everywhere, in the US crime has been decreasing in major cities for three straight decades yet suburbanites think New York is Gotham. When I lived in Japan people in the inaka thought Tokyo was dangerous! Even my wife is like “I wouldn’t let me kids walk freely / take transit in Tokyo only the countryside” and I’m like what?!?
Well yeah, we can dress this any way we want but fact remains that our standards for what is acceptable level of safety keep rising. As they should. Even the houses that were considered well-built when I was born aren’t up to code anymore.