How safe is Japan for female travelers?

As a male I feel safe about travelling around Japan. But as for my wife, I can't say that I feel confident in her safety if we were to be seperated. I hear stories of women being groped by men, and of course the horror stories of pretty young woman going missing and no justice to be found. Are these stories media-driven lies?

There is no "complete safety" anywhere in the world, even in your own home, but you can say the crime rate of Japan is lower than that of many other countries in the world :D

Girls going missing with no justice done?

The only thing close to what you are talking about is a girl who was working at a "Snack Bar" and got involved with Yakuza and drugs and got killed.

As long as your wife doesn't plan on doing the above I would have to guarantee her well being. Japan is very safe. Any potential groper scares very easily. If for some reason your wife was by herself and someone was to follow her, if she just turned and yelled at him in English to go screw himself, he would go away.

Foreigners get stared at here but people are just curious but most importantly for you to know, they are a little scared of us too.

No worries.

I am a foreign woman who has lived in Japan for 10 years, and I assure you your wife will be safe if you are separated.

Groping on trains happens on extremely crowded trains at rush hour, mostly to Japanese women. I am on the trains almost every day and haven't experienced it, I'm happy to say.

As above, Lucy Blackman worked at a hostess bar and went to the holiday house of her murderer voluntarily, and Lindsay Hawker went to the house of a guy she didn't know well and who had already stalked her. Lucy Blackman's killer is behind bars. Although what happened to the two girls was a tragedy, what they did was risky, and would have put them in danger anywhere in the world.

I can walk around at night pretty much anywhere in Tokyo with the knowledge that I will be safe. I wouldn't walk through parks at 3am by myself but I would probably be safer doing that here than just about anywhere else in the world.

Don't worry about your wife, she will be fine.

Nowhere in the world is 100% safe but Japan would have to be close to it. I have travelled fairly extensively throughout the world and would have to say that Japan without a shadow of doubt is where I would feel safest traveling alone. Relax and enjoy the trip.

I've travelled twice solo through Japan (Honshu, Kuyushu and Shikoku) for 4 and 5 weeks, even on quite isolated places. I've never felt I was not safe. Just use common sense!

Facts are not "lies" but I think stories always get attention because those stories are rare enough to attract viewers. Unfortunately, the Blackman case has not met justice, but as for the Hawker case, TV recently featured police asking every restaurant in (I think it was) Ikebukuro due to a witnessing.

As other people have said, Japan is a safe place, and any danger is equally, if not less, possible. As for women, there are many stories of chikan touching foreign women, but if she just yells "Chikan!" and points at the guy who touched her, he will for sure be taken down by onlookers, be it in a train or out in the open.

If your wife treats Japan like any other place she would go out alone in, she will be fine.

Out of everywhere that I have travelled in the world I have never felt as safe as I do in Japan. Even in Tokyo I felt 100% safe and I'm usually the paranoid type so that's saying something. I was sad to leave Japan because the feeling safety was priceless. I'm sure there is crime but as someone minding their own business walking around the streets I can't imagine ever encountering a problem.

I just came back from Japan. I went there with my mother and we stayed in Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo for 2 weeks.
I can tell you that we didn't have any problem and we felt safe wherever we went. Japanese people are very polite and they are willing to help you even if most of them don't speak english.
So, I think that you don't have to worry at all.