
Why so little looting in Japan? It's not just about honesty. - PixelRobot
http://www.slate.com/id/2288514
======
pwim
_They're good at their jobs, too: The clearance rate for murder in 2010 was an
unbelievable 98.2 percent, according to West—so unbelievable that some
attribute it to underreporting._

High clearance rates don't mean police are good at their jobs. Police in Japan
can hold a suspect for 23 days without charging him. During this period, they
try to get a confession out, using techniques such as sleep deprivation.
Furthermore, once you get to trial, it is usually with only a judge, not a
jury. All levels are pushed to keep up this high conviction rate. So just
because the rate is 98%, this doesn't mean justice was actually served at that
rate.

~~~
ugh
How does the judge/jury distinction come into play? Is there empirical
evidence that trials with juries have more accurate outcomes?

I truly know nothing about this but my gut feeling has always been that juries
don’t improve trials and I never perceived that as a strange or uncommon view.

~~~
pwim
Judges face bureaucratic pressure to maintain high conviction rates. According
to the following paper, it can have negative effects on a Judge's career if he
appears to be lenient:

<http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf>

~~~
ovi256
Only in a system where judges are elected, like the US. Many, if not most
European countries (to discuss the examples I'm familiar with) appoint judges
and have had a jury trial system until the beginning of the 20th century. It
was abandoned after it was found to be easy to manipulate on a regular basis.
Jury trials degenerated into character trials - prosecution would try to
discredit the accused, and defense would try to paint him as a pillar of the
community. Juries placed too much weight on their personal feeling towards the
accused, and too less on what happened and what the evidence was.

We like to hope that the US system solved this problem, of course.

~~~
metageek
I believe only a few US states elect judges; they're usually appointed.

~~~
moomba
Even if a judge is appointed, there could still be public outrage over the
perception of low conviction rates. This would cause another judge to be
appointed. The same thing goes on with cabinet positions of all levels of
government where the public demonstrates outrage.

------
forkandwait
High human capital, perhaps? I would hazard the educational/ cultural level of
a japanese high school grad about equals that of an American state univ grad
(I is one, so I can criticize). Nobody would be surprised SF State got hit by
an earthquake and the students didn't loot. (The low educational and cultural
level of the US is embarassing....)

~~~
DannoHung
What the hell is a "cultural level"?

How do I gain additional "culture"?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I recommend building theaters or deploying Great Artists.

~~~
ovi256
There are some wonders with empire wide effects that may be a cheaper way to
improve culture. Look into those. One may argue RL Japan has a lot of those:
the Shinto shrines, the temples, the castles.

------
Duff
These stories have the odor of propaganda to them.

I'd argue that there's no looting because refugees are penned up in shelters
inland, and the coastal towns are pretty much gone.

In Katrina and Haiti, people were stuck in the immediate area of destruction,
and didn't have anywhere to go. Remember the guy blogging from the datacenter
in New Orleans during the Hurricane? The whole city broke down, there was
nowhere to go. In Haiti, the whole place was barely functioning before the
earthquake.

------
kadobaro
So little looting? Hate to burst your bubble, but the Japanese news is full of
scammers pocketing money "for earthquake victims", people stealing from
charity boxes, and looting.

Yes, looting. I can't find many news articles other than in Japanese, but here
we go. Just use Google translate (<http://translate.google.com/>).

Since the earthquake, there were over 250 cases of looting in Sendai alone.

[http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date3&k=2011031900317](http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date3&k=2011031900317)

Here's a nice article that mentions people trying to break into ATMs right
after the quake.

[http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date2&k=2011032000211](http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date2&k=2011032000211)

Here's just one about stealing from charity boxes. There were probably 4 or 5
articles today.

[http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date2&k=2011032000250](http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa_date2&k=2011032000250)

Stuff is happening, it's just not getting translated into your news.

~~~
fadzlan
While that is true, I think the looting cases there could be viewed as an
exception, as compared to widespread looting that happens just after natural
disaster anywhere else in the world.

------
stretchwithme
Whether Japan is the ideal or not, society needs to reward productive,
mutually beneficial action and discourage parasitic behavior. We couldn't even
plant crops if other people could easily reap the results.

The US has been failing at that quite a bit in some areas of the economy. We
encourage unwise risk taking, while shifting the consequences to those who
produce. That is unscalable and unsustainable.

------
angus77
I wonder how many people returning lost goods actually claim the 5-20% they're
entitled to. I lost my bag once (with my wallet in it). I went to the police
box closest to the area where I'd lost it, and of course they had it. Someone
had picked it up and turned it in. The officer I talked to explained to me
that the finder was entitled to a percentage, but had checked a box on the
form waiving the finder's fee.

And to be honest, I don't think I'd claim anything either if I turned in
someone's wallet.

------
dhughes
I work with a Japanese woman she's about 30 years-old and has been here in
Canada for at least ten years (a guess) and I can confirm that she is polite
and courteous to the extreme.

It's embarrassing to see the contrast of some of my fellow Canadian co-
workers' manners they eat with their mouths open, talk with food in their
mouth, suck their teeth, turn up the TV in the break room with others in there
just because they want to watch TV, walk in front of elderly people - so
infuriatingly self-centered.

Customers at work keep asking her about Japan and if her family was injured
and she politely answers they're OK but day after day people keep asking as if
they think they are the first to think to ask her the obvious instead of
having some common sense and keep their mouths shut.

People think of Canadians as polite but Japan certainly holds the top spot for
manners of all nations on this planet if all Japanese people are like my co-
worker friend.

If we ever had a disaster here I know of at least one person who won't be
opportunistic and rob me when I'm down.

~~~
elai
There are disadvantages and advantages to politeness. A polite society tends
to be more disconnected, less intimate and harder to make friends with in vs.
a more intimate, but possibly a bit more "rude" society too:

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.html)

------
Helianthus16
>"Why don't Japanese loot? Because it's not in their culture. How is that
culture defined? An absence of looting."

immediately followed by:

>A better explanation may be structural factors: a robust system of laws that
reinforce honesty, a strong police presence, and, ironically, active crime
organizations.

how is that in any way different from the circular definition the writer just
criticized?

which I think indicates the real problem with the 'culture' argument; it's not
that it's circular, it's that it is vague, which is why the rest of the
(detailed) article is actually quite informative.

~~~
jerf
One is circular, one proposes a social mechanism whereby looting will lead to
negative consequences for the looter. I'm having a hard time seeing what you
think is not different about those two things.

~~~
Helianthus16
Those social mechanisms are a part of culture. I find it hard to conceive a
definition of culture that does not include the systems of negative
consequences that a society enforces.

------
mynameishere
The next time the entire state of Iowa floods, I want to see endless articles
about why midwestern white people don't loot. Don't bother, here's the reason:
_Most people don't loot_. The default "loot bit" on most people is firmly OFF.

In New Orleans, people loot. That also doesn't warrant a lot of analysis.

------
Joakal
Police in Japan are said to beat confessions out of suspects, even false
ones[0]

[0] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8290767.stm>

------
davej
I found it interesting that a lot of supermarkets in Japan _lowered_ their
prices following the earthquake/tsunami.

This is despite the fact that they were disincentivised to do so because
obviously the potential for profit on foods and commodities is high after a
natural disaster.

------
phrotoma
The bit about the response of criminal organizations is very interesting. I've
heard odd rumors about Japanese career criminals, such as commonly going into
the business fully expecting to go to jail. Can any one suggest books / docs
on the subject? (Preferably non hollywood-ized).

~~~
btn
The article cites Jake Adelstein and his book "Tokyo Vice", which is a good
review of the Yakuza from a western perspective. He also contributes regularly
at <http://www.japansubculture.com/>, which also features a lot of insight.

------
vjk2005
I've been studying them for a few years now and will now offer my observations
to those interested. The reason why there's no looting in Japan is a result of
their uniquely homogeneous population combined with the unique culture that
they have been forced to develop as a result of their perilous location, where
there's a quake every 5 minutes on average, where tsunamis are so abundant
they came up with the name 'tsunami' in the first place, and where there's no
dearth of fires and typhoons.

To deal with this high probability of disaster, they have become ants(updated
below). What's that? Ants live in a world where disasters many orders of
magnitude more than an individual ant can handle, occur multiple times a day -
colonies getting crushed by predators, flooded with water from human habitats,
food they chance upon is multiple hundred times an individual ant's weight etc
etc. To deal with this, they have evolved into the 'superorganism', which is a
fancy word for saying every individual will put the community first and
themselves second, which enables the whole colony to move and work as if it
has -one and the same- mind. So if a colony gets destroyed, there's no looting
or in-fighting in ant-colonies... they all move as if they possess the same
mind, with the ants who were in-charge of foraging for food run out as a team
to find the next suitable space for the colony while the ants in-charge of the
colony' larvae protect it for the moment till the time is right to re-locate
and so on.

Becoming a superorganism is the only way for the ants to deal with the
catastrophe of the magnitude that they face everyday and still ensure the
survival of the majority of the colony successfully - they have to put the
colony first and the individual second. Unlike the simple minded ants, humans
are far more intelligent, hence independent, than ants, making it harder for
human societies to function with the kind of 'one-ness' the ant colonies show.
But the Japanese, thanks to their largely homogeneous population, are the
closest human equivalent to the superorganism.

Being in a country where they know that a disaster of such magnitude is
inevitable, they have evolved into a culture of disaster recovery than
disaster prevention -"It's not possible to prevent disasters, too numerous,
too powerful. So let's focus on recovering from the disasters with the least
cost to time, people and resources." They do this by being fast &
efficient(you know where JIT, Kaizen come from) and function as if having the
same mind (even their language has evolved to support this way of functioning
with the strange third-person like way of speaking which I believe is called
気遣い, kidukai or consideration). By trying to become a superorganism, they
achieve the same benefits that the ants do - incredibly fast and efficient
disaster recovery, but they also show the same side-effects - no looting or
in-fighting, fiercely protective of their homogeneity (again, their language
has evolved to support this with something called Katakana where non-native
words like 'Advanced Cartridge Slot' are turned into pure Japanese sounds -
アドバンスカートリッジスロット which is pronounced as adobansukaatorijjisurotto, all native
Japanese sounds), clearly visible patterns in the way they work, highly rigid
social pecking order (Senpai+Kouhai, gekokujō), outliers will be punished and
so on.

This unique culture is why they survived a 'surprise' nuclear attack (emphasis
on surprise as it is many orders of magnitude easier to deal with something
you know about than it is to deal with something that is happening for the
first time in history) and came back to be who they are today. This is all
made possible by their homogeneous population and such strategies will fall
flat on its face anywhere outside of Japan.

Just my 2 cents.

update: My comparison with the ant-colonies is not meant to belittle the
Japanese but to show how their community has evolved similar to the ant-colony
superorganism. If tiger communities behaved like a superorganism I'd have used
tigers. The focus of my comment is on the 'nature' of ants and not on their
physical properties.

俺の国語より日本語上手いんだぜ。大好きっていうレヴェルで住むことじゃねよ。なんで好きな人たちの悪口言うわけ！

~~~
forkandwait
SInce I just downvoted you, and I hate downvotes without explanation, let me
explain: The japanese are no more "ants" than, say, Southeast Asians. You may
be correct in saying they have a society that values cooperation and that has
developed norms and structures partly in response to common natural disasters.
However you then slide into characterizing them as mere insects driven without
the dignity of human choice, creativity, or spontaneity. And you come off
sounding like a racist (though you are probably a good deal more complex in
person).

Plus your post was way too long.

~~~
vjk2005
Tigers are not known for functioning as a superorganism, that's why I had to
go with ants. See this video to know about the power of ants - Ants: Nature's
Secret Power - Part 1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwATgYaEku4>

In your mind, perhaps ants are 'little' and 'mere insects' but in my mind I
see only those parts of them that apply to the discussion at hand.

Let me elaborate.

I never said they are 'no more than ants'. When I said 'they are ants', I
meant it to be an intro to the analogy of how their society's functioning has
similarities to the superorganism that is the ant colony, thus showing the
same behaviors of stronger community, less in-fighting, rigid society and
protective nature, which enables them to efficiently handle disasters that
would cripple any other normal society, just like how ants can handle their
entire colony being destroyed only to rebuild it anew in 2 days.

I also never said anything about them lacking choice, creativity or
spontaneity. You will note my references to concepts they have pioneered -
JIT, Kaizen, Katakana. Sony was built amidst the ashes of the war in a
dilapidated building. There's so many more I could write a book.

Racism is not about -ignoring- differences. Racism is the opposite -
recognizing the differences and still treating people the same -despite- the
differences. I treat everyone the same.

Comment is long. It's the result of years of observation that started when I
was 23 and first came to know that in Japan, the average delay per train
throughout the year is a mere 0.4 minutes, including delays caused by
typhoons, earthquakes, snowfall, heavy rain, and other natural disasters. It
boggled my mind and I set out to learn more about the people who could make
this happen. That comment is not meant for everyone but only for those curious
about what makes the Japanese do the things they are renowned for.

------
MaysonL
Perhaps it's a myth?

See:
[http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03...](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03/why-
no-looting-in-japan-ctd-3.html)

------
known
"The nail that stands out will be hammered down." -- Japanese Proverb

------
Aetius
Also, Japan's population is very old...average age is 45. Older people take
far less risks than young people.

------
michaelochurch
One important note: _most_ Americans are honest and some will go well out of
their way to do the right thing. I think there's actually more of the latter
(people going well out of their way to help others) in the U.S. than in many
other countries. If you lose something in the U.S. and there's a way for a
person who finds it to return it to you, your odds are well above 50% of
getting it back. Possibly 90%. This number is pretty constant across racial
and geographic lines. Oddly enough, measured honestly rates tend to be
slightly lower at the socioeconomic top and bottom than in the middle. At the
bottom, it's because of economic desperation. At the top, it's because people
are so used to a sense of winning and entitlement that they enjoy "beating the
system". I'd argue that, at all levels, class-based resentments are the reason
for lower levels of honesty among Americans.

Japan has something much closer to a "middle-class society" or classlessness
than we do. They have rich and poor, but not in the way we do, and economic
status doesn't persist over generations as in the U.S. For example, the
earthquake victims are in for a very difficult few years-- more difficult than
most people in the industrialized world ever experience-- but they're not
going to fall to the bottom of society because of this. In the U.S., they
easily could. I know PhDs in the U.S. who end up in $7/hour retail jobs after
developing health problems, losing their jobs, their insurance, and their
savings.

The biggest difference in the U.S. is that we have a large, angry underclass
that (justly) considers itself failed by society and hates it. We also have a
tiny but invincible upper class that gets away with literal robbery and tends
to set the moral pace in our society: kids in academic cheating scandals
generally say they're just preparing for the real world, and they're more
accurate than we'd like to admit. "Most people cheat" is false, but "most of
society's biggest winners are cheaters" is true.

I think the contempt for society and ethical behavior that you see in a
visible few Americans is based in social class, not anything else. Every
society has poor people, but our underclass comprises 20-40 percent of the
population. It has a mix of people who've fallen into it recently (from the
disintegrated bottom of the middle class) and who are angry, and it has
families that have been in it for tens of generations and have been nurturing
grudges forever. Also, not all looters and ruffians are in this underclass,
because there are a lot of opportunistic middle-class people who adopt "thug"
culture for kicks. In the U.S., we enable cultural illnesses (mean-spirited
conservatism, religious bigotry, lower-class "thug" culture) that other
societies have the sense of marginalize.

------
Groxx
A handful of broad claims, an abnormally high amount of data and decent
writing, and discussions here ranging everywhere. So, because someone has to
do it, and because I'm curious what his take on this is:

    
    
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