By NORIMITSU ONISHI
URL -
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/asia/06JAPA.html?hp
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TOKYO, Sept. 5 — In a working-class neighborhood in far eastern Tokyo called Koiwa, rising crime spurred a merchants' group to start a collection and buy 60 surveillance cameras.
Installed on lampposts and buildings in March, they record people moving through several blocks around the train station. To make sure no one misses the point, signs declare that the area is monitored, in Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese.
An hour away by train in western Tokyo, a citizens' group patrols twice a day an area of elegant houses called Meidaimae, where streets have drawn an increasing number of thieves, muggers and robbers.
"In Japan we always believed that air, water and safety were free," said Yutaka Sakomoto, 66, a sake merchant, after an evening patrol. "But it's not like this anymore. Safety is not free anymore in Japan."
Crime has risen sharply in Japan in the last few years, altering everyday lives, especially of city dwellers, and for the first time becoming a hot political issue. In one of the world's safest countries, where people had not even been conscious of crime until a few years ago, almost everyone now knows someone who has been robbed or whose house has been broken into.
While overall numbers are still low — the annual murder total has remained around 1,300 for the last decade — nationwide statistics from the National Police Agency show a rapid rise particularly in crimes affecting ordinary people.
From 1998 to 2002, robberies went up 104 percent, car thefts 75 percent, purse snatchings 48 percent and burglaries 42 percent. A general category comprising six serious crimes swelled 75 percent.
Today, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is seeking re-election on Sept. 20 as leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, convened a full cabinet meeting on crime and said he would introduce an anticrime plan by year's end.
"We cannot say Japan is the world's safest country any more," the prime minister said. "The whole nation needs to tackle this crime issue."
The National Police Agency last week announced plans to hire 10,000 more police officers over the next three years, on top of a similar increase approved last year.
The police will focus on what they describe as the twin causes of rising crime: foreign criminal gangs and Japanese youths.
Experts identify the prolonged economic recession and a sharp drop in traditional Japanese values as two reasons for increased youth crime.
"Among the youths the basic notion of not being a nuisance to others has declined, and adults are responsible for that," said Shinichiro Kuwahara, a deputy director of the National Police Agency. "There are many parents who won't admit their kids' wrongdoings. They say, `Why pick on my child?' Parents used to apologize: `I failed to raise and discipline my child properly.' "
Unlike most Japanese criminals, the foreigners work in groups. Experts say these foreigners, many of them Chinese, often overstay student visas and then begin stealing goods, especially cars, to sell back home.
After polls showed that public safety was a top concern of voters here in the capital, Governor Shintaro Ishihara made being tough on crime a pillar of his re-election campaign in the spring.
After an easy victory, for the first time in Tokyo's history Mr. Ishihara appointed as his lieutenant governor not a politician, but a high-ranking police official famous for his tough stance against organized crime.
"There was a safety myth here — that Japan was a safe place without doing anything," said the lieutenant governor, Yutaka Takehana, who keeps a Japanese book about another famous crimefighter, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in his office. "But now that myth has collapsed."
Japan remains a country where women still leave their handbags unattended in restaurants and office workers ride the bullet train and go to sleep without worrying about their briefcases. So any rise in crime is transformative.
"I now hear that you should always lock your door when you leave home, even for five minutes," said Mayuko Watanabe, 30, who was looking after her two boys in a park in Koiwa.
On a nearby street an orange poster warned that someone's bag had been snatched recently. A convenience store was just robbed in the neighborhood of Yoko Yanagi, 44, a day care teacher.
Hidetaka Kashiba, 46, who was delivering tanks of liquefied gas to nearby homes, said he had recently seen a motorcyclist grab a pregnant woman's handbag.
He said he now wanted the number of public servants reduced and the number of policemen increased.
Mihoto Sato, 30, a mother of three, knew of an elderly couple whose house had been burglarized; she herself, unsettled by the poorly lighted street in front of the park, had begun taking another way. She said she now felt drawn to voting for politicians who would do something about crime, "an issue close to my daily life."
"I would rather vote for politicians who say they will protect our lives than for someone who talks about North Korea," she said.
People in Koiwa grew concerned with crime in the last five years, said Shizuo Miyazaki, the leader of the merchants' association. What had been a small community changed in the last decade, he said, as newcomers, including many foreigners, moved in.
As incidents of shoplifting, muggings and purse snatchings increased around the train station, the merchants' association formed a safety group last year, Mr. Miyazaki said. Since surveillance cameras were installed in March, crime has been halved, he added.
But the cameras did not dissuade a shoplifter from taking about $150 worth of vitamins recently from Yasushige Kunii's drugstore. "We need harsher punishments for shoplifting," said Mr. Kunii, 58, who was knocked to the ground when he tried to stop the thief from fleeing.
The authorities have encouraged private patrol groups, saying they cannot fight crime alone any longer. Five years ago the police solved 84 percent of serious crimes; the rate fell last year to 50 percent.
The police say that because of Japan's history of low crime it has fewer police officials than other countries. The United States, with twice the population, has almost three times as many law enforcement officials.
Traditionally many crimes were solved here because suspects simply confessed their guilt. But foreign criminals and Japanese youths rarely confess, said Mr. Kuwahara, the senior police investigator.
"Chinese criminals are making a fool of the Japanese criminal-judicial system," Mr. Kuwahara said. "Even if they get arrested, they only get suspended sentences for the first offense and get deported. Then they come back with a forged passport and commit the same crime. Even if they get convicted, they can endure one or two years in prison, and in the meantime the money is transferred and their relatives build gorgeous houses with it."
Mr. Takehana, the lieutenant governor in Tokyo, said that Japan, which needs foreign labor, must rethink its immigration and labor policies. But for now the Tokyo government and the police, he said, will crack down on crimes committed by foreign gangs and by youths, and will support private patrol groups.
This kind of tough talk on crime is likely to spread, said Ikuo Kabashima, a professor of politics at Tokyo University.
"Crime is a big issue in Tokyo," Mr. Kabashima said. "I think it will become an issue soon in Osaka and other cities."
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