Japan’s Lost-and-Found System
citylab.com
citylab.com
- Availability. There are police stations (kobans) and officers on the street everywhere, just a few steps away from wherever I may find something. Turning in a lost item has no friction. All it takes is a few extra steps. In the U.S. there is huge friction - I would need to go out of my way to go to a police station and turn in something.
- The general view of police and government as your "friendly helper" as opposed to enemies. Officers and public staff (at train stations, etc) are service workers there to help you. I can ask them literally anything - directions, store recommendations, etc - and it's totally normal. Turning in a lost item to some random officer on the street is just a normal. In the U.S., I try my best to avoid all people in police uniform. They tend to be unfriendly, not helpful, and their job is to see if I am doing something illegal - not to help me. While this may not be true, that is my perception. I wouldn't even trust them to actually take care of a lost item I give to them. And the fact that they're carrying guns doesn't make them look any more friendly/helpful.
The definition of what "police" means in Japan vs. most Western countries is completely different.
The US has a much more negative and adversarial view of govt in general, but in polls a large majority has a much more favorable view of cops versus other govt agencies. Certainly it's a terrible generalization to say americans view cops as enemies.
One import factor here is where specifically you live. Police in the US are local systems which totally differ based on local laws and culture. In a place like Los Angeles County, with its high crime problems, cops are a lot more jaded and defensive. Meanwhile in the small beach cities in LA, the cops are very helpful and mellow.
This is not my understanding at all. I have a ticket that has all kinds of nonsense in a relatively low crime Overland Park, Kansas: reckless driving, bla bla bla. What I really had was a flat tire and I was stopped on the side of the road. Not that it matters because in any case the officers arrived on the scene more than ten minutes after I got the flat tire. I don't blame the officers: they can't admit it but I'm positive they have a quota to meet so they do this kind of nonsense.
To their exact sentiment
> The general view of police and government as your "friendly helper" as opposed to enemies
...the key phrase is "general view" and not "enemies". The general view in america is more varied, as a function of the diversity of people, experiences and opinions, for better or worse.
I guess polls might miss homeless people, though there aren't enough to swing the numbers noticeably. I don't see why they'd hate cops especially.
I wonder how incarcerated people in Japan feel about cops. Have you seen ho they treat prisoners?
And polls might not include incarcerated people, yea. That will make a bigger difference in the US stats (0.65% of the population incarcerated, vs Japans 0.05%).
And since 9/11 the police have gotten a lot more militaristic. But police departments all over the country are TRYING to return to the idea of community policing. It'll take a while before we get there but that's absolutely where things need to be.
In Japan, kids constantly have small positive interactions with the police, government workers, or other people in uniform. They may greet or bow to you on the street, help with traffic, announce trains, etc. That contributes to the image that they are approachable and want to help you. If you grow up with that, you'll have a very different image of the police.
I have also heard people claim that in the long term this trend towards militaristic/adversarial policing is a long term fallout of the 1960's. Bright people who wanted to help others saw the police as authoritarian supporters of the status quo, so did not join. Which over the long term shifted the culture of police forces.
That's to me a sign that there is a fundamental cultural difference in Japanese attitude, in the US stats aren't anywhere as close to as severe, yet relations/trust is much worse. Goes to show how much of a productivity and effectiveness loss lack of trust is, regardless of how justified.
Well, the US has the largest incarceration rate in the world (24% of the world's prison population for 5% of the world's population), the death penalty, and even death penalty for teenagers, plus horrible prison conditions, private prisons that are profit centers, widespread acceptance that prisoners must be "punished" (as opposed to reformed, etc), the medieval three strikes law, bail law. Plus cops routinely shooting people, and even SWAT-ization of police forces.
So I'd say it's justified that the "relations/trust" is much worse.
The Japanese conviction rate or detection could affect a much smaller amount of their population -- and it could be even because prosecutors only move on when they are close to 100% sure about a case.
And while the kangaroo court thing is maybe a bit too true to be comfortable with, I'd wager Japan errs heavily on the side of not bringing potentially contentious cases to court.
Basically in Japan they err on the side of letting criminals roam free if it's not an open-and-shut case in front of a judge, but it sucks for the (very few) who are wrongfully convicted, because nobody will believe them. Especially because you'll never get the government to admit they wrongfully convicted someone.
https://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/13/9989250/japan-crime-con...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autop...
(although I would like to make clear -- in any large country, you will find examples of both)
FWIW, in plenty European countries, police officers are also treated amicably (and asked for directions, etc, much like in Japan) but there's also no 99% conviction rate. I think Japanese cops are treated with trust despite the scary conviction rate, not because of it.
If I were a cop in the US, I'd also be an aggressive dick. I'd rather rough innocent people up a bit too often than get shot because I was too easy going. It must be one of the scariest jobs in the world.
The system not pushing everything tends to benefit the powerful. The other system em also tends to hurt the weak. One evil is still better than two, if you ask me.
In some world states, the prosecution, having taken a case to court but seeing that it is likely to lose, often drops the case. This typically coincides with the practice of judges of dropping strong hints to one side or the other that they will rule against them, and thus it might be better to drop the case.
Factoring in people held in US because they can't make bail, also diminished some of the "held without trial" margin. But this is fundamentally a bigger problem in Japan, as it has now embarrassed the country on the world stage due to the Ghosn case.
A state that holds people just becauss it doesn't like them, rather than due to evidence of breaking its laws, relegates them to the same league as the North Koreas of the world. Profoundly embarrassing for a first world country and a major step backwards in reputation.
And one man succeeding in shady dealings hurts few. But the state succeeding in boundless detention puts everyone in peril. He may have some power, but there is no more powerful an entity than the state.
There's a basic rule of war: slow slow, fast fast. You slowly and quietly gather your forces and telegraph nothing, and when the moment comes, you unleash it all at once and unrelentingly. That's what they should've done. Not made a move until they had the evidence to put him away.
The fact they couldn't do crap for months on end just broadcasts to the world: "we don't actually have any evidence to convict him on".
Nothing's sacred in this world, not even habeas corpus, because no one can be arsed reading history -- it was never a matter of anyone forgetting it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINAk2xl8Bc
The premise is, yes 99% percent is a measured rate but also has no utility in a discussion if the other parts of the big picture is ignored.
I also think there is a slight flip-side, at least in the city. There are so many people crammed together that there is a sense of always being watched, doubly so if you are a minority.
I remember picking up a 100yen coin (about 1USD) in a train station. Normally I would just put it in my pocket and think "lucky me" but I was keenly aware of the station worker watching me from the ticket office. I walked over to the worker and handed him the coin saying it was lost property.
I do sometimes wonder what happened to that 100yen.
If anything, they will leave things on the street if there is no koban near by. Every single kid knows that, if you see some unattended property, the safest option is to leave it be. If it's a commodity then you can return it and probably should. Everything else you don't touch (and by any circumstances you don't touch bicycles!)
I don't remember the thread, but there was a story here on HN about the guy who tried to take and return the bike to the police station. He was, to his own surprise, questioned hardly about why did he do that and what was he thinking. They wanted to put him in detention, too.
I do agree about police helpers, though. I am not living in Japan anymore and, boy, I am missing that.
They're insanely rigid, almost always put arrested people in detention for maximum of 23 days even if they know the people are innocent, and they have a 99% conviction rate.
After living here for a couple of years, I feel that this is also closely linked to the highly homogeneous culture, where people are generally very friendly and kind to those who share the same origin, and can become unconsciously biased against people or things out of the "normal" world.
Like any other organizations and most Japanese. Anything out of the book is "impossible", the subset of rules that must be followed are strictly enforced and anything unplanned needs 12 people "hummm-ing" for hours to take an obvious common sense decision.
Children in Japan are taught at a young age to turn in even small found items, like a single small denomination coin, to the police station.
This bakes into them the sense that "that's what you do with found items" and coupled with the fact the police will return it to them if no one collects it, bakes in a sense of trust of the police at an early age.
Many years ago where [1] I was working as a designer of test equipment the head of the drafting department had a saying:
"If you make the right way the easy way people won't do things the wrong way."
He ran his department on those principles and got things done accurately and quickly.
It looks like the Japanese have the same idea.
[1] Philips Mullard semiconductor plant, Southampton, late 70s, early 80s. Such a long time ago I can no longer remember his name.
And you don't think that people who view the police as "enemies" tend to be less honest...
Come on, this is very far from the only example of the extremely high social capital in Japan compared to the West, especially the US. It's just absurd to pretend that it is mainly due to the number of police boxes.
Previously, there was another article on this [1]. And the corresponding HN thread [2]. And also a wonderful comment [3].
[0] Kaizen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200114-why-japan-is-so-...
It's horribly inefficient but exactly what a lot of people want in their jobs here. Kaizen is an example of executives and people who occupy the top of the chain mostly just pontificating and getting high off their own airs and mostly empty words with no internal policies or actions behind it imo. Most famous example in the Japan expat community of this would be somewhere like Uniqlo or Rakuten - horrible places to work with CEOs who like to roleplay as the next Steve Jobs.
I love this country, but these articles foreigners write without ever actually having worked in real Japanese companies with mostly Japanese natives always come off as a bit naive to me.
As for the people at the top, they do seem to have more than their fair share of god complexes. I notice this a lot with their academics too. The average japanese person is so respectful and humble, it's like they overcompensate when they are in charge.
Off the top of my head, there are two examples: the Fujifilm digital cameras (where you may have a totally different camera than the one you bought, thanks to firmware updates bringing in new features) and the Shimano bicycle parts (where improvements continuously come to top-shelf product lines, then trickle down to cheaper lines).
With the caveat that I have also never worked in a Japanese factory floor, that might be the difference between white and blue-collar work in Japan.
Given that the standard plastic issue umbrella is sold in any konbini [7/11 et al]) for 500yen combined with Japanese honesty that always surprised me.
Can anybody knowledgeable comment on this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjTwPII-mxk
With many people using the same cheap plastic umbrella it is very difficult to tell which one is yours. I have had quite a few umbrellas "taken by mistake".
How much "taking by mistake" is a euphemism for "stealing", well, I'll let you be the judge.
My hack: attach a small key to your umbrella handle. Many people will think twice about taking a key.
An umbrella may be 500 yen, but not getting wet when it's raining is priceless :) So, getting an umbrella stolen while you are in a store has a much higher cost than 500 yen.
Edit: Funny story. When I first moved to Japan, I lost 33 umbrellas in 3 years. I couldn't figure out where they were going. Then at the morning meeting at work they said, "We have this huge pile of umbrellas in the back room. Can people please claim them?" They were all mine... Apparently in the morning after the staff arrive, they would put them in the back room so that it wasn't a nuisance to visitors. Since I live in Shizuoka where it barely rains, by the time I was ready to go home it was usually sunny and forgot about my umbrella. I never ever realised that it was just getting moved. Of course, by then I was indoctrinated enough in Japanese society that I was way too embarrassed to claim my umbrellas!
Of course, and if it's only a standard bucket, there's a very good chance that you walk away with the wrong umbrella. But are people really that attached to their specific personal umbrella, which is exactly the same as yours, that this matters?
To the other replier: They're very common in museums and comparable venues. Department stores usually have that appliance thing were your umbrella gets wrapped in a plastic baggie to avoid dripping. One wonders, alas, how sustainable that is.
The lockers prevent the "Oh I thought it was mine", excuse, and also places popular with foreigners, who more commonly have actual umbrellas instead of the cheap plastic ones, are more likely to have the lockers I've found.
I'd watch that anime.
It's so you don't have to carry around a wet umbrella in the store.
And if you happen to get a different cheap umbrella when you leave than when you entered, it's not a big deal.
-Here nothing gets returned but they will go out of your way to kill you for your cellphone.
-One of our past police-ministers had done away with specialised units (like child abusers etc)
-He (Police minster) was also found not guilty of committing fraud, yet the party involved was committed of fraud. "Shabir Shaik" (go figure usually it takes two...)
-Police routinely loose or just outright sell their own weapons.
-Police will also sell weapons that are being turned it (The S.A government really wants to disarm all the law abiding citizens)
-Police are routinely arrested for being part of the crime problem. From murders to drug trafficking -Very few ppl trust the police here.
Count your blessings !