Attitudes towards the Police in Contemporary Japan: Part Six -
Police White Papers focusing on Foreign Crime

Professor H. Richard Friman (Director of the Institute for Transnational Justice at Marquette University), Dr. Tom Ellis (Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth) and Sean Curtin (GLOCOM fellow and Asia Times)

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.

Sean Curtin: Foreigners currently make up just over one percept of Japan's total population, so are only slightly overrepresented in the annual crime figures, in recent years accounting for on average between two to three percent of crimes. Despite this, policing policy has focused on foreign crime as if it were one of the most serious issues facing Japan. For example, 5 of the 16 annual Police White Paper policy reports published between 1987 and 2003 took crimes committed by foreigners as their main theme. Why do you think foreign criminals have been singled out?

Richard Friman: Go back to fall of last year, and in fact fall of most years, and you will see the release of the white paper on policing leading to a wave of media stories on the crime challenges facing Japan (a similar bump comes with the mid-year reports and the release of the white papers on crime). The foreign/youth theme has also been consistent for the past few years and received greater play and attention in the internal LDP [Liberal Democratic Party] and national elections last year. [Tokyo Governor] Ishihara Shintaro has demonstrated that crime, especially foreign crime, works as an electoral/power base issue and national level LDP officials have followed suit. The appeal of the issue is not a new discovery for Japan and certainly not a new discovery elsewhere in the world.

In Japan, the foreign/youth crime focus also shifts attention away from broader economic questions of post-bubble recovery and embedded corruption and limited paths of opportunity for Japanese and foreigners alike, police and the deeper questions concerning the changing role that Japanese organized crime has played and now plays in society. Some foreigners and some youth clearly do commit crimes and with population cycles and foreign migration patterns there are more foreigners and to a lesser extent youth, and more are engaging in crime and being apprehended. Foreigners and youth are also likely to be more concentrated in some offenses (e.g., larceny/burglary) than others.

However, the statistics that posit the staggering crime waves and estimates of relative criminality, always need to viewed with caution not only in Japan but elsewhere. Statistics reflect, among other things: patterns in crime victim reporting (that downplay Japanese on foreigner, and foreigner on foreigner crime and the police's limited abilities to address these issues); selective enforcement against targeted populations through special task forces that shift enforcement resources away from investigating the activities of non-foreign populations and overstate relative foreign criminality; enforcement practices that limit the use of undercover operations, controlled deliveries and wiretapping which in turn limit the extent to which ties between Japanese and foreigners can be identified; enforcement practices that charge suspects for multiple offenses as a means to keep the person in detention until additional charges can be filed; the inclusion of immigration-related offenses in broader crime data as evidence of foreign criminality. These and many more all can be found in Japan and other countries around the world.

The Japanese media with few exceptions tends to echo the official line on crime, especially when the white papers are released, about to be released, and shortly after they are released. Often there is an interesting disconnect in the print media with news stories that print the summaries of the white papers with bold headlines about the foreign threat, and editorials by introspective staff members or guest writers that note problems with the blaming of crime on foreigners and calling for a better approach to crime and social order that does not simply blame foreigners. Television media will produce an array of "Cops" style shows (that follow local law enforcement officers on the beat), there will be the obligatory stories about foreigners running amok in Kabukicho, and statements by unnamed yakuza members noting the violent tendencies of foreign criminals. These will fade after a few months and then the whole process will start up again with the next high profile case, semiannual report, and annual white paper and Japan still will have made little progress in addressing crime.

Sean Curtin: What impact has the long recession had on the perception of crimes committed by foreigners in Japan? Perhaps this has also influenced the Police White papers?

Tom Ellis: I think overall, there is evidence that people in an economic downturn tend to fear crime more, irrespective of whether it is really changing. Foreigners and youth are fairly pan cultural objects of blame in most societies, and particularly developed ones. In Japan's case it is accentuated by surviving notions of essential difference and worries about the cultural impact of globalisation on a single homogeneous Japanese culture that was so carefully crafted in the Meiji period.

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.

Related article

Japan murder fuels false anti-China furor, Asia Times, 13 November 2004