A World of Difference in Japan

Having come to live permanently in Japan a few short years ago, one of the many things that struck me was what a well-ordered, law-abiding, peace- loving nation the Japanese are. This is in stark contrast to one or two other places where I have lived, like Spain for example.

I spent the best part of twenty-five years in that country, and not a day went past when I wasn't molested by somebody in the street. Beggars, thieves, drunks, drug addicts, racists.......in Spain, I came across the lot, very much to a high personal cost. I guess as somebody who once owned his own late-night bar, and later spent many years busking on the streets for a paltry living, the odds were that I would be a lot more likely to see that type of nonsense than Joe Normal.

Here in Japan, I have not been molested not once. Civil obedience is taken very seriously here by the indigenous population, and visitors from abroad are equally well-behaved. Perhaps it goes back to the time when civil disobedience in public was a punishable offense, up to and including capital punishment. Also, Japan very strictly controls immigration. The mainland is not near enough to anywhere for illegal immigrants to hop across to, though I did read somewhere that lots of people who come here on a cruise ship suddenly disappear. Whatever the reason, I lament the fact that I didn't come here to live decades sooner.

Sadly, a few days ago the none violent lifestyle, one that everybody has become accustomed to, was shattered when some grudge-bearing male shot and killed our ex-Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. I was quite emotionally affected by what happened even though I am not Japanese. Even more affected was my Japanese wife. At the end of the day, when she came home from work, she was on the edge of tears, and I wasn't far behind her. How could such a thing happen in a country with zero tolerance of owning a gun?

In stark contrast to the United States, which has thousands of shootings a year, here in Japan you can count the number of shootings on one hand, seriously. To put that into perspective, in 2021, in Japan, just one person was killed with a firearm, in the USA some twenty thousand people were killed with a gun. Here in Japan, getting possession of a firearm involves thirteen steps of background checks into your entire life, as well as sundry exams and license applications. Unfortunately, the assassin's weapon was a homemade device which he learned to fabricate from the internet.

It does appear that security for Abe was lax, no doubt due to people believing that that sort of thing would never happen here. If nothing else, what happened was a big wake-up call for the authorities to tighten up security. Of course, nobody could have foreseen what happened due to a rogue maverick with some sort of a grudge. So I guess they will just have to presume that as anything can happen right out of the blue, they will have to plan public appearances for high-profile people like the Prime Minister with a lot more forethought.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, it feels like our peaceful heaven on earth here in Japan is something we can no longer take for granted. It is a shame that one evil devil amongst us can tarnish the tone of our lifestyle, probably forever, but it is something we will have to learn to live with. It is a crying shame that a man who was a beacon of light on a global stage should die in such a senseless act of violence.