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Dealing with the Aftermath of Japan’s Triple Disaster: Building Social Capital Through Crime Prevention

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Abstract

After the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that struck Japan in March 2011, overall rates of reported crime, already low in international comparative terms, went further down. A relative absence of crime was accompanied, however, by a great awareness of the possibility of crime—as illustrated by emergency policies and numerous crime prevention initiatives and activities by both the police and groups of (local) volunteers. This article will show that the large scale and persistence of crime prevention campaigns and activities can be understood against the background of more general, persistent preoccupations with, and concerns about crime. Based on statistics, media reports, and interviews with (former) inhabitants of the struck Tōhoku area as well as members of NGO’s, it will furthermore show that crime prevention activities, that up until now have received hardly any scholarly attention, were purposely employed to strengthen community ties, as well as to bring about ties between members of communities torn apart by the disasters. Focusing on crime and crime prevention activities after March 11, 2011 in Miyagi prefecture and specifically the town of Ishinomaki, this article will show that amidst overwhelming loss and uncertainty crime constituted and constitutes an opportunity for the (re-)building of social capital.

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Notes

  1. It should also be noted that there were those critical of this stereotypical “master narrative” of the calm and stoic Japanese (see, e.g., Poynter 2011).

  2. Portes in fact observes a growing consensus in the literature towards this definition. Others nevertheless use the concept to refer to the social networks themselves, or as both the networks as well as the resources that the network accrues to its members (for still more definitions, see, e.g., Coleman 1990; Putnam 1995, 1996; Adam and Roncevic 2003; Lin et al. 2001; Fine 2007; Haynes 2009). One reason for using the “Portes definition” in this article is that conforming to a (potential) consensus will facilitate debates on the concept and its use (when researchers speak the same language). Another reason is that the analytical separation of networks as resources (on one hand) and the benefits secured by virtue of membership of those networks (on the other) will help—as will become clear—make analytical sense of the findings.

  3. For a comparison chart, see www.police.pref.gunma.jp (website of the Gunma prefecture police—last accessed 19 July 2013), numbers conform statistics of the National Police Agency of Japan.

  4. Data kindly supplied directly to author by the Fukushima Police Department.

  5. For examples, from internet fora, see: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mxx941/2870080.html; http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mxx941/2911558.html; http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mxx941/2938786.html; http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1457932349. Accessed 26 July 2013.

  6. For examples of such projects and initiatives that all took place in 2011, see http://www.bouhan-nippon.jp/try/try12_27.htm (website of the crime prevention association of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper; “buzzer project”); http://bondproject.sblo.jp/article/44181636.html (women’s support NPO “Bond”: “buzzers for women project”); www.miyagi-kenbouren.comassociation of crime prevention groups Miyagi (financial and material support of local crime prevention groups); http://jenhp.cocolog-nifty.com/emergency/cat22624968/index.html (Japan Emergency NPO: donation of crime prevention goods and car to the Ishinomaki youth crime prevention group), etc. All websites accessed on 26 July 2013.

  7. See in this regard also Hamai (2004) who showed how changing police registration practices affected the levels of registered crime—as well as clearance rates (and perceptions of crime).

  8. Two murders in particular received much media attention: one by a group of teenagers in Tochigi (1999), another by a stalker in Okegawa (1999). Both murders occurred in spite of repeated requests for police protection by the victims’ families.

  9. For example, the murder of two children (one of whom was beheaded) by a 14-year-old boy (1997); the hijacking of a bus by 17 year old, during which 1 passenger was killed (2000); the killing of a girl by her 11-year-old classmate (2004).

  10. On the history, organization, and activities of these neighborhood associations, see, e.g., Nakano 2005 and Pekkanen 2006.

  11. Households, rather than individuals, are the basic unit of membership. For more information on activities, organization and aims, etc., see http://www.chokai.info/list/. Accessed 26 July 2013.

  12. In their study on neighborhood associations and governance in Japan, Tsujinaka, Pekkanen and Yamamoto in fact note that 98 % of the studied local governments collaborated with neighborhood associations in their daily work (2009: 255).

  13. See generally Pekkanen (2006) who argues (among other things) that participation in NA’s creates and sustains social capital in Japan , while also questioning the extent to which this social capital is the same as social capital elsewhere (ibid., 128). I will come back to this matter below.

  14. This is the number of crime prevention volunteer groups registered by the police. According to police officials I spoke to there are also unregistered groups, which would mean that the actual number of volunteers engaged in crime prevention activities is higher than the number given here.

  15. See generally http://www.npa.go.jp/safetylife/seianki55/index.html—crime prevention support site of the national police association; for a specific local example of how the police provides advice to aspiring crime prevention volunteers, see www.police.pref.mie.jp/upload/20110301-203519.pdf. Accessed 26 July 2013.

  16. Personal observation made while in Japan (Tokyo, Saitama), 2011, 2012.

  17. Based on talks with volunteers in Tokyo, Saitama as well as Nagasaki (2011–2013). See in this regard also Nakano 2005, p. 80).

  18. The picture painted by Nakano, who studied (among other things) a group of people engaged in crime prevention with the specific purpose of preventing juvenile delinquency, is that of people participating because they are, for various reasons, expected to do so, and are relatively unconcerned with the “official goals” of the activities undertaken (Nakano 2005: 80).

  19. Many crime prevention groups are formed in response to NA’s urging their members to do so. As a result, groups are to a great extent made up of those already volunteering in the NA (in the survey conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 2012 mentioned already above, 72.8 % of those participating in crime prevention activities indicated that their group was formed in response to an NA request).

  20. For in depth (qualitative) descriptions of volunteers’ motivations, see Nakano 2005: 16–38.

  21. Japanese police actively and continuously appear to urge citizens to follow rules, inform them of dangers, etc., by means of leaflets, posters, banners, etc., that can typically be found in community centers, train, and bus stations (and other public places), as well as the numerous police boxes (kōban) (personal observation, Tokyo (etc.) 1997–2013).

  22. The police distributed two series: the “crime prevention newsletter” and a leaflet called “community news—(community) ties”). These leaflets are also available online at: http://www.police.pref.miyagi.jp/hp/jishin/bouhan_dayori/jpn/bouhan_jpn23.html. Accessed 28 July 2013. The leaflets are typically one-page documents with big headers, some comic-like drawings, and a short explanation of (e.g.,) a type of crime that might have occurred, and what one could do to prevent becoming a victim of such a crime oneself.

  23. Numbering on leaflets.

  24. The “community bonds” unit from Tokyo referred to above is also illustrative of this idea.

  25. The word used in the leaflet, and more generally in comparable contexts, is that of 地域 (chiiki), that literally translates as “region,” or “area.”

  26. The values that implicitly attach to membership here (such as social recognition) thus preclude a clear analytical separation between resources as means and benefits as ends, where social capital would here thus appear to reside (in part at least) in membership of networks itself (cf. note 3).

  27. Officers of the Ishinomaki police mentioned the following motivations for volunteers to participate (based on talks with the around 90 volunteers active in Ishinomaki): improving neighborhood safety, contributing to the community (“the local area”), preventing crime, and meeting other locals.

  28. I am assuming here that to those surrounded by people unknown to them, after having lost their house—and often, relatives and friends—making new connections is a “benefit.”

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Ishinomaki, Fukushima, and Miyagi Police departments for their kind assistance, as well as Paul Nieuwenhuize and the anonymous reviewers of the Asian Journal of Criminology for their comments on a previous version of this article.

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  1. Faculty of Law, Institute for Metajuridica, Law and Governance/VVI, Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), School of Asian Studies (SAS), P.O. Box 9515, 2300, RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Erik Herber

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Herber, E. Dealing with the Aftermath of Japan’s Triple Disaster: Building Social Capital Through Crime Prevention. Asian Criminology 9, 143–159 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-014-9183-9

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