This doesn't refute the OP's claims, and I think could support them. OP is saying (to paraphrase) that Japan's tough on crime stance is a deterrent, and so there is less crime, and so fewer people incarcerated.
Also, I don't think a reasonable person is worried about getting arrested or shot going to the US. I'm sure I might be possible to make it happen, but as a Canadian, I have never been worried about either of those things going to the US.
I met multiple individuals on my last trip to Australia who commented on how they felt extremely unsafe in the USA (hearing gunshots at night, seeing shootings on the news). Some were native Australians, others were from places abroad, such as Japan.
Have you been to the US? Do you feel that way? Definitely the news tries to frightened everyone into watching more. I don't think that's too reflective of reality.
I'm a native born and raised in the US, so I'm used to it for the most part. It wasn't till I visited other countries that I realized how strange it is that we are comfortable around it.
I feel much safer on my visits to Australia, for a variety of reasons.
I remember last month landing in LAX and immediately noting how much more "intimidating" the police look here. It's so military / macho, centered around getting the bad guys versus helping folks.
Police in Australia probably aren't saints, but they look more like helpers than anything else (yellow vests, etc.).
Also, I'm never afraid to walk around random streets, alleys, etc. there. It's just. . . different.
Of course, Tokyo is on a whole other level beyond that.
But the point is, I don't have to worry about mass shootings or gun violence in those countries, whereas here I might just be going to Walmart and end up dead. Or I could be at home, and the police decide to do a wellness check on me. Feels like I'm basically playing a roulette game. Odds are low, but never zero, and they seem to be getting worse and worse.
You might want to redefine what a reasonable person is. There are tons of Canadians afraid of the police but it’s very likely they don’t look physically like you. You have to get out of your bubble to find them.
I don’t think any place in the world comes close to the USA in terms of its prison(labor) camps. It has the highest per capita rate of incarceration on the planet. So I don’t think his comparison is warranted.
But I’m actually in Japan right now, and while I definitely did fetishize Japan to some extent this trip has not been pleasant.
Last night I went out for a call in front of my Airbnb so I wouldn’t wake up my baby that sleeping.
I spent 10 minutes with police because apparently I was suspicious. He asked me about my reason for being here my visa and all the other shit the much nicer border guards asked me. And because they were backwards retards he wrote it on a piece of paper instead of checking it on a computer. Giving him a Taiwan if that included my passport number was not enough I just had to go inside and wake the kid. BTW had I not been in front of my Airbnb, I wouldn't have been able to fetch my Passport and I would probably have been taken to the ward. Just for being a "suspicious person in the neighbourhood". That's like being a black person in the US except that you don't get beat up or shot.
The proof of rental wasn’t enough either and when I went inside he followed me without even asking which would be illegal in most civilized places. Yes he was polite and he didn’t yell at me but he was still a retarded racist PoS.
Mind you that police in Japan can and will put foreigners in prison in solitary for 14 days without charge for shoplifting just in case.
That said it’s a beautiful place that is very well designed(eg. high buildings next to busy roads protecting the residential areas behind from noise) compared to other places with similar demographics are complete structural unlivable monsters(Tehran for example).
But it’s not a place I would want to spend more than a two week honeymoon phase at.
I've lived here in Japan for nearly a decade now and had a couple interactions with police. None of them have been targeted, and even when I was doing something illegal (riding a bike with headphones in) or plausibly illegal (sitting in a park drinking alcoholic drinks with my bicycle parked next to me) they were polite to a fault and also didn't seem to care about my immigration status.
Anecdotes are difficult - some people get unlucky and extrapolate their experience to something that is not statistically sound.
Not sure why you're being downvoted...the context that seems to be missing from the OP comment is:
The cops in Japan are nicer to visibly identifiable Japanese people than white cops are to assumed white US citizens. Yes you're more likely to be shot or worse in America, but most often as a nonwhite person. More often to be jailed as well and once you add white citizens of middle and working classes or simply homeless, it becomes a deeply overlapped venn diagram
Somehow many hinted but none of these comments directly identified this.
More whites are shot by police each year than every other ethnicity combined. Sure as a percentage it isn't equal but it isn't close to as unequal as you seem to be implying here.
Blacks are 3x as likely to be shot as a white but when factoring in the documented higher crime rate of blacks as a percentage of the population this isn't as clearcut an issue as the media makes it seem.
If it was a residential area (houses) police generally know everyone who lives there, so yes, they will consider someone they haven't seen before talking on the street at night suspicious.
Sure, except I've been there for a week and walked my child 3 times a day and would go to the local community gym for a swim when she was asleep. So it's not really an excuse.
> I have a feeling you've never actually been there.
I've been Japan, and was lucky to visit as a civilian, rather than in a business or military context. I kept my phone off and used cash for the duration of my time away from my conference and had many informal conversations with Japanese citizens, who were overwhelmingly kind to me as I mourned the death of one of the last people on the planet who gave a damn about me.
Much of what parent said is accurate -- but paired with the fact you will almost never be subjected to their justice system as a white person.
To paint a picture, at the time I cruised on in from Haneda or whatever, the Deftones had recent released "Koi No Yokan", NK was once again threatening to do something nuclear, and I ended up racking a reputation as possibly being the next Ted Kazinski when I used a WISYWYG nuclear yield calculator[1] to show some folks who I shared office space with that based on the projected yield, they might take out the base, but folks at the Bankoku Shinryokan north of the island would just need to take some iodine pills and hope folks glass the North with conventional weapons.
And then, upon arrival, I apparently committed a minor diplomatic faux paux by drunkenly wandering into the neighboring karaoke booth, bumming a cigarette, and loudly declaring that I'd want the base closed too if the Marines kept raping folks in my hometown and crashing their helicopters into apartment buildings, both of which apparently had been a persistent issue for my new friends.
(They were initially a bit hostile because they thought I was a Marine ditching curfew because I was massive bald guy dressed all in black, but I think I may have gone too far in the other direction explaining in explicit detail why they should believe me that I wasn't in the CIA.... hehehehehe.)
Anyways, the times of Shinzo Abe, much like the man himself, are never coming back[3]. Incarceration just traumatizes folks and renders them more likely to act out upon release.
It is time to stop excusing bad behavior and join the younger generation of hackers and phreaks in a shared reality, and acknowledge hard truths like "Japan is so racist, they'd rather invent robots to take care of their elders than relax immigration rules" rather than make hand wavey statements like "They do have an issue with forced confessions" that excuse fascist behavior.
It is unacceptable to coerce a confession. Full stop.
(Sorry to be harsh, but there's nothing I love more than to be the living embodiment of a flavor of potato chip -- specifically, the "Cool American".)
They do have an issue with forced confessions, but you're much more likely to be arrested or worse (shot) in the USA for no reason.
But beyond that, this is an over simplification of something that stems from multiple things, not some singular root reason.
And if you want data, look no further than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... for why your take is absolutely bonkers.
We have the highest incarceration rate by far, so why aren't we safer than Japan?