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Is Japan Really a Low-Crime Nation?

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Is Japan Really a Low-Crime Nation? 2 Is Japan Really a Low-Crime Nation? If we tried to compare the number of cars in Japan with the number of cars in the US we would probably find fairly reliable statistics in this field. Maybe we would have some minor problems concerning differ­ ences as to what is defined as a 'car' in the two cultures, and maybe differences in registering cars would make our comparisons a little bit uncertain. Nevertheless, cars are physical and identifiable objects that are officially registered. Consequently, it should be fairly easy to determine the density of cars in those two countries, and we could properly talk about 'facts' in this connection. The problem of objective fact is more complicated, to say the least, if we want to compare crime rates. Everybody knows that most types of statistics lie. Crime statistics lie even more. This means that the assertion of little crime in Japan cannot be taken as a given fact, but is something that has to be discussed. Is Japan really a low-crime nation? Let me make this statement very clear at the outset: there is no 'correct' answer to this question. Even though I will argue that Japan for a long period after the Second World War should be described as unique for showing little crime, it would be presumptuous to give the impression that this is an unequivocal fact comparable to a statement such as that Japan is a 'high density' society with respect to car volume. Crime is not a physical object (like the car) but a social construction. Consequently, we have to comment on how crime is constructed in Japan and how we can relate and compare this to Western countries. Furthermore, it is important to specify and delimit our concept of crime. There are good reasons to ask the fundamental question: is it really possible to compare the same social phenomenon (for example, crime) between different countries? There are also good reasons to ask what we mean when we talk about 'the same social phenomenon'. The first of 22 D. Leonardsen, Japan as a Low-Crime Nation © Dag Leonardsen 2004 Is Japan Really a Low-Crime Nation? 23 these questions has continuously been discussed among criminologists and statisticians. In 1946 the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission and the International Statistical Institute jointly declared that 'a material comparison of national criminal statistics [has] been judged impossible from the beginning because of the diversity of penal law and of the statistical-technical methods of the various countries' (Vetere and Newman, referred in Wilkins, 1980, p. 23). Since then, this pessimistic conclusion has been repeated many times. In a critical article Watts (1996b) defines it as a 'puzzle' why criminologists wish to explain something that is not 'real' (talking about crime), and declares that the crime rate is nothing but a statistical artefact. To Watts, it makes things even worse if one tries to explain differences between this society and that. Numbers give the impression of exactness, but the empirical reality behind the numbers is very hard to determine, within one country and even more so between countries. Nevertheless, international agencies and scholars in criminology engage in the business of comparing crime rates. Which leaves us in a quandary if we wish to assess whether there is anything like a scientific foundation for including Japan in the group of what Adler (1983) defined as Nations not obsessed with crime. The second question above (what do we mean when we talk about 'the same social phenomenon') touches upon why it is so complicated to compare crime between nations. Wilkins (1980) makes an analogy to elucidate this problem for us. 'The classification of "murder" is like the idea of a "shopping basket" -it will have different contents in different parts of the world and at different times. To add together the number of murders is like adding together the number of shopping baskets found in different countries without reference to the contents'! (p. 25). These short illustrations should tell us that we obviously have to go a bit deeper into some of the tricky problems related to comparing crime between nations. I will make two comments; one concerning the social construction of crime, and one concerning the social construction of crime statistics. A theoretical comment on comparative analysis: On ernie and etic concepts and the social construction of crime If we- as an illustration- start with the concept of 'democracy', we might ask if Japan really is a democracy. We could do that by comparing one or two Western countries. We could go on to ask which is the most democratic, Japan or one of these Western countries? Would there be any major problems related to making such a comparison? 24 Japan as a Low-Crime Nation To answer if, or to what extent, Japan is a democracy, we have to use our language consisting of words designating phenomenon. To discuss democracy we first of all need to have a clear comprehension of concepts like 'individual' and 'individual rights'. But as Hsu and Hamaguchi argue (see Befu, 1989, p. 334), in Japan an analysis of any social phenomenon must start with relations between persons, not with individuals. The idea of individual rights is fundamental for liberal Western countries, and the model of a democratic society takes this as its starting point. This is not so in Japan. Individual rights are not superior but secondary to the collective best in this culture. Consequently, it will represent an ethno­ centric bias if we apply a Western standard as our frame of reference. In the West the good society is based on a kind of inductive perspective: first, we have to determine and safeguard the 'necessities' at the individual level, and then, as a result, we will reach the best for the whole society. A main thesis in classical liberal economy argues that everybody, as a collective unit, will be better off if each person pursues her/his individual self-interest. The same argument is applied in the political sphere. A free and open society should take the individual as its starting point, and the focus is on protecting the individual against 'external' forces, be it the state or other citizens. In Japan the basic model of thinking is reversed. First priority is given to collective interests, while the individual has to subordinate him/herself to society. This fundamental difference between the two cultures shows that a discussion of democracy has to qualify what is meant by the individual interest. This is not the place to discuss strengths and weaknesses in these two models. However, the illustration should make us aware of some inherent general problems in cross-cultural analysis. It is easy to forget that we all wear glasses coloured by cultural filters. The concept of the individual is not just an abstract 'nomen' which, without any further clarification, can be applied in an objective, scientific way in any culture. As I will reiterate in Chapter 4, Japanese language does not even use the term 'individual'. How, then, can we use 'individual rights' as our starting point for a discussion of democracy? Within an anthropological frame of reference one would define the term 'individual rights' as an ernie concept, meaning a concept that is 'specific and peculiar to a particular culture, and meaningful only to its members' (Sugimoto, 1997, p. 20). Concepts that are more universally applicable, transcending national and ethnic boundaries, are called etic. These terms are derived from linguistics where phonetics refers to universal sounds found in languages all over the world, while phonemics refers to sounds peculiar to a given language. This distinction has subsequently Is Japan Really a Low-Crime Nation? 25 been brought over from linguistics to the social sciences and made us aware of the danger of ethnocentrism. During the last 10-20 years it has become more and more apparent that Western social sciences have undertaken comparative studies where they have apparently used etic concepts, but where it could be argued that their concepts are ernie, based on a Western cultural model. 1 In other words: if we want to compare democracy between cultures, if we want to compare religiousness in different countries; or if we want to compare crime, we have to include a reflection on our basic analytical tools. 'God' and 'Heaven' are not very useful concepts in a Buddhistic culture. Since the context of meaning is different in West and East, the meaning of the concepts will also be different.2 The above discussion does not necessarily lead to a resigned conclusion that all concepts are so unique that they make sense only in their own cultural setting. Some emicists, like Goldschmidt, argue in this way: 'Cross cultural comparisons of institutions is essentially a false enterprise, for we are comparing incomparables' (referred to in Hofstede, 1998, p. 18). Campbell (in Triandis, 1994) comes to the same conclusion, arguing that the comparison of any two cultures (instead of many cultures) is essen­ tially useless. I am more of an eticist, but I am sensitive to the dangers and limits of any cross-cultural study.3 As Befu (1989) underlines, neither the etic nor the ernie approach is foolproof. In all contexts man is an evaluat­ ing animal. In this evaluation she/he will easily make 'mistakes'. None of the methodological techniques within the social sciences gives us the ultimate 'truth' about the empirical world. Imperfections are always built in, not only in a strictly technical sense, but also because of a relational argument. Answers to socio-cultural questions are 'true' only in relation to a given frame of reference.
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