People helping on the street

I just read this http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2013/10/23/voices/japan-no-safe-...

If you don't want to read it, it's basically about a foreign girl who got attacked on the street, in a place with a lot of people. She said nobody helped her even though she was screaming for help.

Now, I'm not shocked by the attacking. That happens everywhere, some places more often then others. But I was always under the impression that if something happens to me and people are there, someone will help me. Reading that lowered my enthusiasm for my Japan trip...

Hi Cristina. I was just as shocked as you were reading that article. I'm not a woman, but I can say that I have never felt unsafe in Japan. On the contrary I have had the most frightening experiences in the US and not just the city, but my own hometown in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

i have had complete strangers come up to me and ask if i needed help reading something or offering to translate something I couldn't understand or even offer me snacks. Can't remember the last time that ever happened at home.

I will say that Japanese people tend to be very passive by foreign standards though I have never personally witnessed any occassion where someone was being attacked or some other emergency that would necessitate any intervention. I will also add that I've seen that often foreigners here because of Japan's reputation as a safe country let down their guard (leaving a pocketbook at the table, or generally not paying attention to their surroundings walking down or crossing the street).

My advice would be to be just as vigilant during your time here as you would be anywhere else. If you're here with a friend, stay together, avoid poorly lit or isolated places, etc. But I think you'll be happily surprised by how friendly and helpful a lot of people here can be. I hope that news story hasn't changed your mind about visiting Japan.

The Japanese attitude of 'not getting involved in other peoples' affairs' is often applied even in emergency situations. People will watch horrible things happening but do nothing, not even call the police. Certainly if that incident occurred in the US and many other countries, there would have been some physical intervention to help the woman along with many many police calls and the police would have been there.

That's also why some stabbings have ended in MANY people getting stabbed. All the idiots nearby do nothing and some of them are then stabbed as well.

It's definitely a negative side of Japanese culture and attitude. But it's not only foreigners who notice it. Japanese also criticize this type of attitude, and it has come up particularly with sexual harassment on trains. There have been efforts to promote intervention and some success has been shown. Women who are groped are more likely to receive help from those around them these days than in the past when people would have also pretended not to notice/hear.

Just to add though, these experiences are stil not commonplace and tourists for short periods are unlikely to experience such things. Just like everywhere in the world, women in particular need to be aware of their surroundings and not put themselves in potentially dangerous situations. No one should take for granted that a place is 'safe'.

Yes I know that you're unlikely to experience that as a tourist, but the problem is that I was planning to go back to Japan as a student and live there for a few years. And now I'm a bit shocked. I live in a poor country with MANY flaws, but that kind of attitude is unheard of. Now I'm kinda scared for my safety if I will live there.

I talked to a friend about this earlier and got even more shocked. She told me that there's a law in Japan that says you shouldn't help people if you see them injured, because you might do them even more harm. So that means they will basically let you die there in front of them? I remember I choked on the train the last time I was in Japan. NOBODY asked if I needed help. Thanks god I was able to recover without any help...

I don't know about Japan, but in China, and likely other places, you could get not only in trouble, but possibly blamed for everything for helping someone. Add this fact in with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

And you can see why it happens.


This author's post is a little weird though...Her Osaka story in particular. She scares the attempted kidnapper/rapist by pointing out the police, and then instead of leaving the area, she waits for him to go to a vending machine, buy water, and then bring it to her and apologize. I don't know any women(or man for that matter) who wouldn't try and escape as fast as possible when they were in the clear in that kind of situation.

Concerning foreigners, it tends to be blond women who experience the most harassment and unwanted sexual advances.

I've heard conversations between blonds and brunettes and many (but not all) of the blonds did have some sort of story of harassment or being flashed while very few of the brunettes reported any problems.

This all makes interesting reading. I don't know about not helping in the street, but my family lived in Tokyo for some time, and then visited more than 5 times a year for 15yrs. My daughter is a very pretty blonde and not once was she threatened and certainly not assaulted. We are New Zealanders by birth and our home country is far less safe than Japan. We would not walk in the dark by ourselves. My daughter did some modelling for some legitimate agencies in Japan.. certainly NO HOSTESSING.. the worst thing that happened, someone spat intentionally by her feet. She spoke Japanese, I don't know if this made a difference. I think as Ken says, Japan is far more safe than most, if not all other countries. Women do have to look after themselves out alone at night anywhere, but generally there are others around. I think you are worrying unnecessarily.

I'm a Japanese woman. It's so silly that there is a law in Japan stating that you should not help other people. There isn't such a ridiculous law here. There are a lot of kind people in Japan and they don't certainly ignore anybody in trouble, a foreigner or not. Recently a young woman lost her life rescuing a old man from train accident. It was a big news here. I lived in an European country for 15 years. Japanese people are not less helpful than them, I can assure you. You should experience by yourself to find out what is true or not.
It's important that you shouldn't generalize anything by just one article, should use your intelligence and commonsense.

I talked to a friend about this earlier and got even more shocked. She told me that there's a law in Japan that says you shouldn't help people if you see them injured, because you might do them even more harm. So that means they will basically let you die there in front of them?

I'm afraid your friend is wrong, or at least confusing several conflicting laws. Japan actually has two types of Good Samaritan Laws, both similar to what are found in other countries. One protects emergency workers who try to help you, and the other obligates bystanders to act to help.

The problem that your friend is probably referring to is that doctors/emergency workers are also obligated to give you the best care possible, and they can be held criminally liable if they try to help someone despite knowingly not having access to the proper facilities or means to do so. That has led to people being turned away from ERs and hospitals that were understaffed or under equipped to provide proper care. These are bad, conflicting laws that need to be changed.

Btw, Good Samaritan Laws for bystanders may be on the books but can still have little affect on the real world.

Sorry to add another 2 cents here - but there is one thing I agree and disagree with here.

First - some people are attacked in Japan but this is much less prevalent that most (if not all) other countries in the world. As such - I don't think you have too much to worry about Christina. I have quite a few single female co-workers (non-Japanese) who have not had a problem in Japan.

On people not helping when something happens - I do have to agree that it is much more prevalent in Japan than in many Western countries. I've not had any bad run-ins of course, but did have one occasion when I badly twisted my ankle and fell over quite heavily in a busy area in Sendai. Not one person either looked my way or offered help.

Ironically - I think the people in country Japan areas are more likely to help a person in need than in most countries. I guess it just comes down where you are.

Cristina, did you really read the whole article and are you sure you understood it?

First of all, I don't think the article is basically about a foreign girl who got attacked on the street, in a place with a lot of people but had no help. I think it's basically saying that Japan may not be as safe as you might think, and I agree.

What the article really says is that Japan is just as unsafe as any other place in the world for both foreigners and locals and that people should be as cautious as they would in any other country.

It's a bit unfortunate that this best part of the article doesn't appear until you read most of this lengthy material. The writer spends most of the first half by stretching out the dangerous parts of Japan, but she doesn't fail to write the safe parts of Japan, and they both are true.

This much does happen even in Japan.

She does trust Japan, and she does trust the Japanese police, but she doesn't think that they're flawless at all, and now she knows how to utilize Japan's safety and police system to it's fullest. She concludes with a very good message;

Experiencing these incidents and hearing other women�fs stories has altered my daily behavior. I have vowed to be more careful as I calculate risks in my daily life. I carry Mace. At night, I take roads that have lots of kobans on them, and I know how to explain my route should I have to talk to a police officer.

But I do think that the article has a misleading headline and subtitle. This is probably because headlines and subtitles usually aren't written by the writer of the article itself. Someone ought to make a complaint to Japan Times.

I'm about average height and have the same body type as the average Japanese woman. My hair is naturally straight and almost black in color. My eyes are dark and my skin is light (same as light colored Japanese women)
I'm not East Asian though. Am I going to be safe in Japan?
Reading these type of news articles made me worried and I plan to visit Japan next year.
Please advice me about safety in Japan. Thanks.

Lately a couple of people have posted here that they read one single article about Japan then got all panicky about Japan. This is so childish!

Newspapers and TV,in most countries, report crimes and unusual incidents that happened but not the good things that also happened that day, so one get a totally distorted view of a town or country.

Whenever I read the newspaper from my birth town on the internet it looks like that town is hell on earth..but in fact the number of people hurt,killed, robbed etc. on any given day versus the number of people living there is very very very small.

I remember reading many many years ago about one newspaper that tried an experiment.
For a couple of days they didn't write at all about car accidents, fires, crimes etc. but only wrote about "good" news:

..Ms B (no one knew she was) adopted a stray dog.Good for her!...
Mr. C (no one knew him) cleaned up the sidewalks on his street..Very commendable!
..20 primary school children were seen leaving the school and walking along the sidewalk without making any noise at all. Congratulations!

Things like that..the readers were very very upset! It was all so boring!

Japan times auther's problems came from her incomplete knowledge of Japan. No Japanese, especially no girl, walks around love hotels, where is the place for immorarity. It is similar to walk in Slum. Drugs may be sold in a street in some areas. No Japanese walks around yakuza's offices. there are many areas where some special people live together.
in most of cases nothing happens in Japan, but not all the times.
I think that foreiners want to go to not-safe places, because these places are still safer than those in other countries.

"No Japanese walks around yakuza's offices"

Wow! I had no idea that there were official offices for Yakuza, with their name on the building!
Got to see one of them next time..

Ive read about this a lot. I think culture wise Japanese do have a lot more reserved attitude into stepping in to help. Not that people in western countries would ALWAYS help out, but there is a much higher chance that they would. I see it happening all the time in public in the UK (men breaking up fights). Helping people who have fell over etc. Can Japanese locals really claim the same?

I see it happening all the time in public in the UK (men breaking up fights). Helping people who have fell over etc. Can Japanese locals really claim the same?

Yes, I can claim the same for Japan, except that it's not "all the time" that I see fights.

But again, the Japan Times article is not about that.

Concerning that, I can set an example.

I agree that London is one of the best cities in the world when it comes to people helping strangers on the street. I love London and I've been there many times. But I once felt very un-helped when I overslept my station on the last underground train.

I was a young woman not knowing what to do on a road out in nowhere and none of the many station staffs and construction workers tried to help me.

And I can understand that now. Noone oversleeps stations there, and I may have not looked like the tourist I was and people may have thought I could handle myself. I may even have looked suspicious since I was drunk.

Similarly, if two people are claiming that you're on a stolen bike, like how it was in the article, no one will help you. You need to know how to seek help properly, even in the most helpful or safest cities, and that's what the article is all about.

By the way, finally I got myself together to go up to a uniformed individual and ask specifically for a taxi.