
How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime - Sami_Lehtinen
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729
======
david38
Japan has also eradicated the rights of defendants. They have horrible prison
conditions and conviction rates that will shock anyone.

~~~
suneilp
Those conviction rates are due to how they ignore the rights of defendants as
you said and also how they browbeat suspects into confessing to doing
something they didn't do. The accounts of that browbeating I've read/watched
about are inhumane.

Their society has aspects to it that are suppressive and don't tolerate
younger people questioning older people.

Violence through other means like knives seems to be increasing (correct me on
that if I'm wrong).

The work hours they put force employees to go through is apparently taking
it's toll on their society.

I'm predicting we'll see more issues in their society. I'd be glad to be wrong
but they do have social issues to take care of just like most other countries.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_Those conviction rates are due to how they ignore the rights of defendants as
you said and also how they browbeat suspects into confessing to doing
something they didn 't do._

Sounds a lot like how I hear it's done in the US, a la "plea bargains".

------
yomly
>"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it.
Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says
journalist Anthony Berteaux. "What most Japanese police will do is get huge
futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a
little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."

How telling. Reminds me of the cop who quit the police force after witnessing
drug crime escalation as a direct result of increased criminalisation[0][1]

There was another article on the FT that questioned why Japan has not fallen
prey to far-right extreme populism[2]. The explanation is, of course,
extremely nuanced but one thing that doesn't seem to be discussed much in
mainstream media is the positives of having a highly homogeneous country.

Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally
homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See nations
like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The ideas of social trust are discussed
in _Ill Fares the Land_ by Tony Judt[3] (a book recommendation I picked up on
here). Of course, it is not immediately constructive to say multicultural
countries like the USA or UK should instigate mass deportation and ethnic
purging, but it bothers me that it seems like even discussing the issue of
ethnic homogeneity (not purging!!!) straddles the border of being taboo.

For instance, would it not be productive to discuss how to achieve high levels
of social trust in a culturally colourful society? Nations like Singapore seem
to have made some steady progress in this dimension...

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-
woods-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-woods-
undercover-cop-who-abandoned-the-war-on-drugs)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365667)

[2][https://www.ft.com/content/987dddda-
bbe2-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d...](https://www.ft.com/content/987dddda-
bbe2-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d080)

[3][https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-
Judt/dp/014311876...](https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-
Judt/dp/0143118765)

~~~
Veratyr
> Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally
> homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See
> nations like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.

I'm not sure you can say they're ethnically homogeneous. 15% of Swedish and
24% of Swiss residents are foreign born, for one.

I suspect that the difference between European countries and the US isn't that
there's more homogeneity but that the various cultures and nations have been
so close to each other for so long that they've just got over most of their
problems. While the US has only been a civilised nation with its own identity
and culture for a bit over 200 years, many European cultures and countries
have been developing, warring, making peace and exchanging territory with each
other for over a millenium.

The US is very very young and its people are still learning to accept each
other and get along. Remember, slavery only ended 150 years ago and
segregation only ended 60 years ago. It takes time to fully move on from
things like that.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Your reasons seem to summarise to: because the US is full of savages.

Slavery ended in Sweden in 1847[1] (153 years ago), so that can't be it.

1.[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_slave_trade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_slave_trade)

~~~
Veratyr
I wouldn't go as far as calling the people of the US savages but they
certainly haven't learned how to get along as well as the Europeans do.

Slavery of local peoples (the people near Sweden) ended in 1335. Slavery of
_Africans_ ended in 1847. Unlike the US, Sweden doesn't appear to have a
significant number of recent former slaves that need integrating, so I think
my point still stands.

------
pella
"Even gangsters live in fear of Japan’s gun laws" (2013)

[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/06/national/media-n...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/06/national/media-
national/even-gangsters-live-in-fear-of-japans-gun-laws/)

 _" Under current laws, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a gun and bullets
that match, he’ll be charged with aggravated possession of firearms and will
then face an average seven-year prison term. Simply firing a gun carries a
penalty of three years to life. And for the “accomplice” reasons above, a
yakuza boss may decide a death sentence is more appropriate if his thug
miraculously gets released on bail before going to jail. One mid-level yakuza
boss told me, “Having a gun now is like having a time bomb. Do you think any
sane person wants to keep one around the house?”_

------
WalterBright
It's more complicated than the simplistic article suggests. For example, Japan
has an exceedingly low crime rate, which is not explained by lack of guns.

------
viseztrance
I live in Romania, which according to this list[1] is number 4 of gun related
deaths per capita (Japan is number 2).

The long lasting communist regime ensured very few people had access to guns.
Decades passed since its collapse but the strict law regulations remained in
place to this day.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-
related_death_rate)

------
pliftkl
Interestingly, Japan actually has a homicide rate on par with the US if you
include suicides (with the delta between the Japanese and US rates being
filled by our murder rate).

~~~
draw_down
What?

------
dingdongding
We all the know there is a solution to mass shooting in US. It's just that
politicians and people fancy about gun way too much and like to keep a gun at
hand for "safety"

~~~
IslaDeEncanta
The best way to undermine a democracy is to get rid of people's ability to
defend themselves.

~~~
labster
I don't know, people have plenty of weapons in the U.S., and the person who
won the presidency by 3 million votes still didn't take office. Yet in the
U.K. where few people have guns, the people voted for Brexit and they will get
one. It sounds like gun ownership level is inversely proportional to democracy
level to me.

~~~
emusan
That's a pretty serious abuse of correlation...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
But, you must admit that context of the post replied to it was very well put.

Formula:

1\. Outrageously bold claim

2\. Obviously ridiculous and nonsense claim of correlation

3\. Things are rarely as simple as some few-word slogan.

~~~
IslaDeEncanta
I don't think it's outrageous to say that a few people with weapons can
command many people without weapons.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I don't, personally, recall the last US election that was settle by a shoot-
out.

It seems most modern democracies get by fine without civil wars.

Or: what, exactly, are you suggesting.

~~~
IslaDeEncanta
I'm suggesting that a fascist dictatorship is harder to establish in a place
where everybody is armed.

