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42 Criminology 179 (2004)
Explaining Japan's Postwar Violent Crime Trends

handle is hein.journals/crim42 and id is 191 raw text is: EXPLAINING JAPAN'S POSTWAR VIOLENT CRIME TRENDS* AKI ROBERTS University of New Mexico GARY LAFREE University of Maryland KEYWORDS: Japan, crime trend, pooled time-series analysis Japan has long been recognized for its low rates of violent crime, rates that usually seem to be declining. The most common explanation for postwar rates links unique cultural characteristics to a system of exceptionally effective informal social controls that, at the macro level, suggest low levels of social disorganization. Other common explanations include low levels of economic stress, a small proportion of young males and a criminal justice system that delivers a high certainty of punishment. In this paper we test these four explanations for Japanese trends using both an annual time-series national analysis (1951 to 2000) and a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of the 47 Japanese prefectures from 1955 to 2000 (at 5-year intervals). The results from the two analyses are largely congruent. They show that measures of economic stress, certainty of punishment and age structure are-compared to common social disorganization measures-more consistent predictors of Japanese postwar violent crime trends. Our results suggest that the remarkable strength of the postwar Japanese economy may play a larger role in explaining Japanese violent crime rates than is usually recognized. Japan's low rates of violent crime began to attract the attention of researchers and policy makers as early as the mid-1970s (Clifford, 1976; This study was funded by a grant to the first author from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, November, 2002, Chicago. We would like to thank Lisa Broidy, Koichi Hamai, John M. Roberts Jr., Bert Useem, the editor and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and Akihoko Itoh, Rio Takeuchi and Yoh Takeuchi for assistance in data collection. CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 42 NUMBER 1 2004

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