Police are abundant and the homeless population is so small it's rarely seen. Tokyo allows you to relax — Toronto, not so much
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Spend two weeks in a foreign country and you’re bound to compare it to home. Whether it’s the stunning architecture of Paris or the warm beaches of the Caribbean, you sigh and say, “How lovely, if only we had this in Canada.” But you know it’s a fantasy: you can’t recreate 200-year-old stone walkups in downtown Toronto, and the water of the Atlantic Ocean will never be 28 C.
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Then you go to Japan and the most striking difference isn’t something caused by geography or some other irreproducible factor. It’s the incredible sense of safety you feel in public places. The numbers bear this out: Canada’s homicide rate is 2.25 per 100,000; Japan’s is 0.7. Our robbery rate is 56 per 100,000 people; in Japan, it’s 1.2. And while crime has risen in Japan since the easing of COVID restrictions, it’s still nowhere near what it is in our country, or much of the West.
What is the impact of this difference? You relax. You go about your day without clutching your purse to your chest or side-eying the nasty-looking dude on the subway. Because there isn’t one to begin with.
My teenage daughter and I travelled up and down the country, and not once did we feel unsafe, whether hunting for a late-night eatery on a deserted street in Osaka, riding the subway at 10:30 p.m. in Tokyo or walking up lonely mountain roads in Hakone. Through seven cities and dozens of train and subway rides, we witnessed only one man with evident mental health issues yelling at passers-by. We saw two homeless people. We were never asked for money, as panhandling is illegal.
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What we saw instead was six-year-olds taking the subway to and from school alone. Schoolkids of all ages walking down the backstreets of major cities by themselves. What a change from Canada, where my daughter has on several occasions had to disembark from Toronto streetcars in broad daylight because someone was high and threatening other passengers, and where kids have routine lockdown practice in schools. We have become so accustomed to violence that we teach our kids how to deal with it — instead of demanding that it stop.
So what does Japan do differently? First, it is a big fan of hyper-local community policing. Instead of big police stations covering a large district, Japan’s Koban and chuzaisho system puts nearly 13,000 storefront police offices in busy areas like shopping centres and train stations, staffed 24 hours a day by three to five officers. The officers also patrol the local area on foot or by bicycle, and they don’t just deal with crime. They also assist lost children and collect lost property. Police are seen as helpful, not hostile, and their presence deters criminal activity.
Second, and Conservatives won’t like this, Japan’s restrictive gun laws mean that gun-related crime is almost zero. In 2022, Canada clocked about 14,000 incidents of firearm-related violent crime in a country of 40 million people; Japan had nine of the same in a country of 125 million people. That’s because getting a firearm is a major endeavour in Japan: there are 12 steps, including multiple background checks, a police interview to explain why you need a gun, a doctor’s note saying you are mentally fit and a requirement to pass written and practical firearms tests with 95 per cent accuracy. Only shotguns and rifles can be purchased and classes and exams must be re-taken every three years.
Finally, Japan has the lowest rate of homelessness in the world. A government study in 2023 counted just over 3,000 homeless people. In Canada, it is estimated that 235,000 people experience homelessness each year. Japan credits its “housing first” policy, which seeks to provide shelter without preconditions, and then assist with addiction issues and community reintegration.
Sure, Japan has cultural differences that contribute to its safety. It is a high-trust society that prizes order. It is ethnically homogeneous and more accepting of authority. But we can learn from its policies. The restrictions it imposes on some freedoms beget other freedoms we no longer have: the ability for ordinary people to go about their business peaceably and the freedom for their kids to be independent. Sometimes, striking the right balance between liberty and security can mean thinking outside the box — and even, outside our country.
National Post
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