While surfing the Web the other day researching Japanese demographics, I found this government Web page.
The page says, “To revive the title ‘Japan — The safest country in the world’, Immigration Bureau aims to reduce the number of illegal stay foreigner to the half the number of 2004 until 2008 and in order to achieve this goal we need your cooperation.”
The page appears to be rather old–perhaps being posted in 2004 and updated in 2007–but it is still on the Web. I don’t object to the government receiving reports on illegal immigrants. The U.S. does the same, and it would be negligent for a country to have no apparatus for reporting illegal immigrants. However, I do object to the racist tone of the Web page. The government is playing to the common perception that foreigners commit a lion’s share of the crimes in Japan, and all the country has to do to make Japan safer is to get rid of illegal immigrants. I am surprised the government, with official statistics on the country’s crime rates, would promote this racist assertion. The poor English on the page is also revealing. I normally find Engrish to be endearing, however, on this page it simply underscores the government’s ignorance.
Japan hardly has a problem with illegal immigration. Japanese police estimate the number of illegal immigrants in Japan to be around a quarter of a million people, or about 0.2 percent of the population. The U.S., by comparison, has 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, roughly 3.7 percent of the population.
The common belief in Japan is that most of the country’s crimes are committed by illegal immigrants. Despite common belief, the only crime most illegal immigrants commit is staying in the country illegally, as in the U.S. In 2002, foreigners committed less than 6 percent of the crimes in the country. Adjusted for visa violations, which only foreigners can commit, then the percentage is less than 3. (I don’t know what percentage was committed by actual illegal immigrants.)
Crime statistics
Before presenting these statistics, which I’ve calculated myself, I should report some problems in the methodology I used in arriving at these numbers, which had to do with using secondary sources, and statistics from different years (numbers on crime rates came from 2002, numbers on immigrants were from 2008, and the overall population number came from a 2009 estimate). I think my statistics are valid because I don’t think that foreigners are committing statistically more crimes today than in 2002. I don’t know why rape and arson were reported together in 2002’s statistics. Keep in mind the population of Japan has decreased slightly since 2002, which could skew numbers slightly higher.
Population of Japan (2009 estimate): 127,560,000
Number of foreigners in Japan (2008 estimate): 2,217,426
Number of Japanese citizens (2009 population estimate minus 2008 number of foreigners): 125,342,574
Crime statistics (2002)
Crimes by Japanese
total: 546,934 [rate, total divided by Japanese citizens: 0.4 percent]
violent: 6,925 [1.3 percent of crimes; rate, total divided by Japanese citizens: 0.006 percent] (rape or arson: 2,531 [0.5 percent of crimes; rate, total divided by Japanese citizens: 0.002 percent)
Crimes by foreigners
total: 34,746 (more than 50 percent were visa violations) [rate, total divided by number of foreigners: 1.6 percent; minus visa violations, 0.8 percent]
violent: 323 [0.9 percent of crimes; rate, total divided by number of foreigners: 0.015 percent] (rape or arson: 42 [0.1 percent of crimes; rate, total divided by number of foreigners: 0.002 percent])
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These numbers show that while foreigners have a higher crime rate, a smaller percentage of the crimes are violent crimes, and the rate for rape or arson is roughly the same as the Japanese. And none of the numbers are totally off the charts in comparison to Japanese rates. It is also worth noting is that the former head of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Emergency Public Safety Task Force, Hiroshi Kubo, published a book disputing foreign crime statistics, suggesting that such statistics were being manipulated by politicians for political gain. He also said that the crime rate in Tokyo is based on reported rather than actual crimes. When adjusted for actual crimes, rather than reported crimes, the crime rate for Japanese citizens could be much higher. (Japanese police have a tendency not to respond to crimes when yakuza gangsters are involved.)
The Japanese media also fuel the misconception that foreigners commit more crimes, with frenzied reporting on rapes by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa, while underreporting similar crimes by Japanese citizens. There have also been cases when the media attributed a crime to a foreigner (usually an ethnic Chinese) when the actual perpetrator was unknown.
If Japan wants to regain the title “Japan — The safest country in the world,” they should hire a competent police force, crack down on organized crime by their native yakuza, learn how to use nuclear power safely, and stop antagonizing neighboring Asian countries. Deporting 0.2 percent of the population that commits fewer total crimes than Japanese citizens will do little toward reviving that title.
