NPR had a good piece about how the Chinese looked at the Japanese and wondered the same thing when hey had so much price gouging and looting themselves during their last major earthquake.
Why no looting in Japan?
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Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#12In part, it's the Yakuza. In the neighborhoods they control, no one commits crimes they disapprove of. It's much better for it to be peaceful for the gambling and other revenues.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#13In part, it's the Yakuza. In the neighborhoods they control, no one commits crimes they disapprove of. It's much better for it to be peaceful for the gambling and other revenues.
That would be really interesting if true. Do you have any sources to back that up?
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#14Japan, like Germany, is a society that has been bombed into submission. They went straight from feudal society into Empire mode. There's nothing particularly peaceful about their history.
60 years ago they sure didn't see any problem with looting the entirety of Asia and were about to continue into the Hawaii and the West until that pesky little thing called World War 2 got in the way.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#15The Japanese have a lot of respect. When I visited a common thing said was "If you leave your wallet on the street and come back a day later, it's likely it will still be there or in the closest shop."
This actually happened. When we were living in Tokyo my wife lost her wallet. A day later she found that it was sitting in the basket of her bicycle outside our building. This was a busy street in a business district (Nihonbashi) with hundreds of people going past it and it was a large new coach wallet with at least a few hundred in cash.
Not that someone wouldn't have eventually stolen it though.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#16From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! ; Feynman and a colleague are staying at a traditional Japanese hotel in Kyoto: The next morning the young woman taking care of our room fixes the bath, which was right in our room. Sometime later she returns with a tray to deliver breakfast. I'm partly dressed. She turns to me and says, politely, "Ohayo, gozai masu," which means, "Good morning." Pais is just coming out of the…
I came here to quote Feynman too, but a different part:
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
It seems to me that they asked a bunch of people in the US why they think there is no looting in Japan...
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#17There was a major power outage in much of the northeastern North America, affecting tens of millions of people, and almost no looting (aside from isolated incidents in Ottawa and Brooklyn) there either. There was a major terrorist attack in New York in 2001 and no looting. There was a major earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 and no looting. This statement that "looting is something we see after almost every tragedy" is simply not true.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#18This is probably a presumptuous or naive statement, but the very first thing that came to my mind was: if you have ever been to Japan, you wouldn't even think of asking this question.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#19How about because the Japanese have been living on that island for what, 30,000 years? I think they have a sense of longevity in their culture that we could all really learn from.
So have the people of England, what's your point?
No, they have not. Roman Briton was a different society than pre-Roman Briton. The Anglo-Saxons came about 1500 years ago and nearly completely replaced the Britons, genetically and culturally. The Norman invasion was about 950 years ago and greatly changed Anglo-Saxon culture, although not as much as the AS changed post-Roman Briton. There were several other invaders (Danes, etc.) as well.
By contrast, the Japanese are perhaps 3,000 years old as a distinct ethnic group on the island.
Re: Why no looting in Japan?
#20In part, it's the Yakuza. In the neighborhoods they control, no one commits crimes they disapprove of. It's much better for it to be peaceful for the gambling and other revenues.
That would be really interesting if true. Do you have any sources to back that up?
No. The Yakuza generally do not participate in civilian affairs, nor are they interested in "policing", except where someone becomes a personal nuisance to a higher-up or someone disrupts their business.
Their primary interest lies in the financial side of mizu-shobai type establishments, gambling, and money laundering.
They also offer thug-work-for-hire, which is helpful when the police aren't, but you've got to be careful dealing with them because there tend to be hidden costs to their "help".
* whoops. replied at the wrong level :P