Japan is considered by many to be the safest modernized industrial country in the world, and a bit of time living here will do much to support that case. For one thing, it is not rare to see children around the age of five or six walking alone or in small groups to and from school -- even after dark. Women and even young girls can walk on almost any street in almost any neighborhood at pretty much any hour and not have to fear being attacked.
Japan is not crime-free, however, by any stretch of the imagination, and the shocking nature of some Japanese crimes, coupled with their relative rarity, often stir up quite a sensation.
Perhaps one reason why Japanese crimes tend to be particularly grisly is directly because of the rampant regard for law. Simply put, "ordinary" people don't commit crimes here (until recently, but we'll get to that); so crime tends to be the territory of the professional criminal or the deranged. The fact that guns are outlawed here may also mean there is no "clean and easy" way to kill someone. This makes the streets immeasurably safer than in the U.S. (you NRA folks keep your email to yourselves), but it also means the determined opportunistic killer must often use more gruesome means.
Examples of such crimes in the last few years would include the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system by the cult Aum Shinrikkyu; the beheading of a mentally handicapped child by a 14-year-old boy obsessed with American horror films; the abduction, rape and murder of four pre-teen girls by a killer who then left their charred bodies on the doorsteps of their parents; and the stabbing to death of an English teacher by a junior high boy who was given only an 18 month sentence in a reform school because he was "under extreme mental pressure due to a recent knee injury."
Each of these examples points to a specific tumor on the dark underbelly of Japanese culture which bears further examination. The sarin gas attacks revealed Japanese susceptibility to cults, perhaps heightened by their cultural tendency toward forming tight groups. Cults, then, can become the tight groups of those who are outcast from the rest of society's groups. The rape of schoolgirls surprises few because the society openly allows "censored" child pornography (only the genitals must be somehow obscured, usually by electronic mosaic), and some cities (Tokyo is one, but it's currently under debate) allow girls down to the age of 12 to engage in "assisted dating" (prostitution). The society on the whole tends to place women on a lower plane socially than men, and sexual harassment (sekuhara in Japanese parlance) is overlooked, even if it involves groping strangers on a crowded train.
