People around the world have marveled at the lack of mass-looting in Japan among the survivors of the recent earthquake and tsunami. Many people are still asking: Why was there no mass-looting?
People are undoubtedly comparing the incident in Japan with other natural disasters in the world when people under similar circumstances did loot. And they didn't just loot food or necessities, but big screen TVs and other "must have" household appliances.
Some plausible reasons for looting are: panic, greed, and because everyone else is doing it. Looting has become the norm, the expected.
One person suggested the Japanese didn't loot because they had more faith in their government to provide for them during a crisis. Hmmm. I doubt it.
Others suggested it is the "wa" mentality, where harmony of the group is put above the individual. Hmmm.
Another person suggested it was somehow related to the fact that the Japanese return lost items -- giving an expose on how lost things are most always returned to their owners in Japan, including wallets, cash and umbrellas. I might add that there is an incentive in Japan to turn things in -- if no one claims the item, you have the rights to it. Thus, you get to feel like a hero for turning it in and have a chance to keeping it legally. When I turned in a wallet one time, the policeman told me that I was entitled to a reward from the owner if he came in to claim it. Unfortunately, the owner was a high school student who didn't have any money in his wallet anyway. Just notes passed in class and girls' phone numbers.
But, I'd like to offer a more plausible, politically incorrect answer as to why the Japanese didn't participate in mass looting: integrity.
One common experience among foreigners coming to work in Japan for a year or more is that when they leave Japan, they leave a more polite person. As a foreigner, you learn that certain things that may be accepted back home are just not tolerated here. Petty crime (Who stole my plastic gnome lawn ornament?!), verbal assaults on store clerks, and anger in the form furrowed brows, pursed lips and the occasional disgruntled snort, are not accepted here. So while in my society, an angry, gnome-stealing person may be normal, in Japan such people are thought to be selfish and dishonest. And, by God, you don't just take things because they're not chained down! Once you know the rules of a society, however, it's surprisingly easy to adjust your own behavior to fit into that society.
Two adjectives that immediately come to mind when describing the Japanese: polite and harmonious. Which makes me wonder, if you are not polite or harmonious, what are you?
While Japan has a group-oriented society, in the U.S. we like to describe ourselves as focusing on the individual. Our society teaches us cognitive thinking: look, evaluate, then decide whether to loot or not (often times justifying our actions with, "If I don't take it, someone else will anyway"). The Japanese, on the other hand, look, evaluate and still don't loot. The point is, "That item doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the store owner." This is selfless, which, I hate to point out, is the opposite of selfish. Sniffle.
There is an easy way to expose the flaws in our own thinking, just in case you're wondering what yours are. All you have to do is rearrange your way of thinking in much the same way you rearrange the furniture in your house. For example, I once met an angry, exasperated tourist who had just come out of the post office. "Why is it," he wanted to know, "that in Japan the trains are so exact but they can't even run an efficient post office?" After mentally moving the couch from one side of the room to the other, and replacing it with the dog's armchair, you could say, "Why are the post offices so efficient in my country but the trains always so late?"
Is it the presence of "wa" that prevents people from looting, or is it the power of the individual that allows them to loot? "Selfishness" is a word societies need to think about.
An honest society is not unique to the Japanese. Ask your own parents or grandparents and they will surely tell you how it used to be, when there was more respect, less crime and no road rage. But whereas we have slowly lost our integrity, the Japanese have not lost theirs.
Although an individual-based society can also be a good society, when it comes to a crisis, you can only hope that people will be less selfish, and more selfless.
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This is the honest truth and while they will not tell this to American tourists, this is the actual truth of it.
FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM
OsiXs (Revolution 2.0)
And they have demonstrated exceptional qualities of heroism and self-sacrifice in Japan. I do think that the other side of that coin is an acceptance of obviously poor government and an electric company that seems to control the government, rather than a government that oversees safety etc. in its nuclear plants. There has to be a balance somehow and I think the world is painfully seeking its way toward that. mg
Positive cultural peer pressure.
Homogenous culture.
Respect for government and order.
Self-respect.
Long history of natural disasters.
Philosophic and religious foundations of the society.
In some homogeneously constituted countries peer pressure to loot ( Haiti,) is just as strong as in others peer pressure not to loot ( Japan).
In immigrant-based countries ( U.S.) during lack of law enforcement some ethnic minorities tend to loot more,. some less.
Employers will work you over and above the stipulated hours and not pay you for it, the convenient store will charge you twice for a bottle of water if they can get away with it....you got to be on the lookout all the time..looting during a natural disaster is simply a logical extension of taking advantage of the weak and the unwary............
Of course, the reality is that these things did exist as they are and have always been. It is memory being rearranged/glossed over, not the facts of the time.
One only has to pay attention to see that Japanese society is not as harmonious or polite as this article suggests. A land where child pornography is defended, ethnic discrimination is overt, rape and sexual assault occurs in public transportation, high unemployment amongst the young, a problem with many people disassociating themselves from society.
You obvioulsy are in love with Japan. That's great, I like Japan as well. But there are social issues that you ignore to describe a polite and harmonious society that does not exist. So there is no looting in Japan, but there is a reason why Tokyo and Osaka have train cars for women only.
Since the tsunami, there's been this unspoken undercurrent of "Why Can't The Blacks Behave Like The Asians?" All this 'nobility' of the Japanese people is reductive and insulting. They're human beings & therefore just as capable of light & darkness as anyone else on earth, but their cultural norms, as another poster stated, prevent them from stealing. Google "model minority" and get back to me.
The reason for lack of looting, and all the other things you mentioned, is not integrity, but the concept of "face". If someone were to steal, for example, a TV, no one in the community would trust them or speak to them. An action of this type would cause them to be ostracized. This is deep in Japanese culture, as is the concept of "giri", or obligation.
For the Japanese, this is a matter of social survival. Their code of conduct requires the appearance of happiness, regardless of the situation. Any friction caused puts them in a position to be condemned. In this way, "harmony" is enforced in the society. Ask any of your Japanese friends about visits from the "Happiness patrol"...if you can get them to speak about it.
Theirs is a controlled environment, where individual action, thought, and feeling are regulated by how it will affect other members of the society. That is not integrity. That is compliance.
First, if you don't take the time to understand a culture, you are tourist with a colonialist mindset. Your desire is not to experience a destination, but to be above it.
Second, during China's Sichuan earthquake crisis in May 2008, a disaster which left more than 70,000 dead and millions homeless, there was no looting either. But there were no news reports about this in Western media. This is irksome, since the cultural responses to these catastrophic events were and are completely different: here in China, EVERYONE participated in one way or another in relief efforts. From what I have seen and read in the media, and heard from people in Japan, there is no internal organization toward proactive relief efforts at a grassroots level. The Japanese are waiting for their government and the international community to do something for them.
Just info, I'm a fan.
I love it how nobody dares mention Katrina on here. The Japanese lost far, far more people, property, power, and resources after this Tsunami than was destroyed by Katrina. The Japanese people have a sense of Nationalism, they offer each other a helping hand rather than demanding a Hand Out. New Orleans should be embarrassed.
Iceland and Finland have the lowest crime rates in the world, and are very much Liberal/Progressive.