Also not mentioned in the post is the anti-social forces efforts (eliminating the yakuza), which is primarily implemented by disallowing financial transactions with organized crime, or businesses even associated with organized crime. It's hard to fence things if there's no one around to fence it. It's hard to re-sell fenced items if no one will buy from you. I really do wonder if mercari has made this problem a bit worse.

Sure, the police don't arrest people they can't convict (which is why their prosecution rate is so high), but that doesn't change the reported crimes, which this data related to, so it's not a data issue. Japan is less safe than they report (murders are often shown as accidental death in numbers, for example), but in general property crime seems to be mostly non-existent.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/legal-and-political-magazin...

I still remember this anecdote from an article several years ago headlined “As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do” [1].

> THE stake-out lasted a week, but it paid off in the end. The tireless police of Kagoshima, a sleepy city in the far south of the country, watched the unlocked car day and night. It was parked outside a supermarket, and contained a case of malt beer. Finally, a passing middle-aged man decided to help himself. Five policemen instantly pounced, nabbing one of the city’s few remaining law-breakers.

Can you imagine this happening in San Francisco?

[1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries-up-...

I'm friends with many people in the (tuner) car community there and car theft as well as parts theft is still happening too often for locals.

It's gotten to the point (well, it's been this way already for a while) where locals do not want photos of their cars posted on the internet unless their license plates are censored. This is because the license plates describe roughly the area they live in. So someone could spend time poking around Street View on Google Maps and potentially find where a local lives and either steal their car or attempt to remove expensive parts (aftermarket wheels, for instance) for selling.

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01697/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

IoT like nest and other things may also make people wary of casual crime, its much more likely you're on film. I know there is a really good privacy concern around ubiquitous cameras but the other side of the coin is older, insecure and scared people who gain some comfort from knowing somebody can see whats going on around them. Ubiquitous digital cameras emerged across this timeframe.

Japan's crime culture is ideated by westerners as "about them, not us" -but this is about crime by Japanese on Japanese so it's outside that model. Certainly as a sometime frequent western visitor to Japan I have never felt the degree of situational risk I have felt in other economies, just being on the streets. It is a place where the most likely outcome of dropping your wallet is to have somebody help get it back to you. Most likely, not only.

Maybe theft from other Japanese really has declined, for it's own reasons? Maybe people no longer think its worthwhile? Which tends to the economic argument. Why steal that trivial bit of plastic and metal, if you can buy it in the 100 yen shop?

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mexican-lemons-res...

Although to be fair most of them are still pretty bad and expensive if you get one with rent-seeking built in.

It's nothing magical. People don't value stuff you can steal at home anymore. The 4K TV is worth less than a nice CRT or flat screen was then. Computers and phones don't hold value long and they're often with you. Face to face crime is more common in the US, like burglaries involving people still inside.

You might just own nothing and be happy.

Also, do I remember incorrectly or did they not go on a serious campaign to break the yakuza at the same time?

A lot of petty crime is enabled by the organized crime providing the infrastructure (fencing, financing, etc.) required for individuals to be able to convert their crime into money.

(See, for example, the current "shoplifting" spree in the US or "bike theft" rings. While individuals often commit the crimes, gangs are the big enablers by functioning as fences. It's why your stolen bike can wind up in Mexico before 24 hours have passed.)