Perception of Disorder and Crime, and Responses to Them in Japanese ‘Mega’ Railway Stations

Abstract

The crime rate in Japan is far lower that the crime rates of other industrialized countries. However, the severely high fear of crime among Japanese citizens has been considered a priority political issue for the last few decades. Thus, the fear of crime rather than crime itself can be considered as a more important issue to be examined in Japan. There seem to be certain places in which the fear of crime is high in Japan, and one type of these felt unsafe places is the mega railway station/terminal (Funyu and Hanyu, 2003).