It’s a blustery winter afternoon, and a young couple in hoodies and baseball caps study apartment listings taped to the glass doors of a real estate agency near Takenotsuka Station on the northern fringe of Tokyo’s Adachi Ward, close to the border with Saitama Prefecture.
“We’re thinking about moving to this area since we’ve heard it’s pretty affordable,” says the woman, a hairstylist in her mid-20s. “But we’ve also heard it has a bit of a sketchy reputation and might be unsafe at night, so we’re walking around to take a look. So far it seems like any other neighborhood, really.”
For outsiders, Adachi Ward — particularly its commercial and entertainment districts, such as Takenotsuka — has long carried a reputation as one of Tokyo’s rougher neighborhoods where cheap bars, pachinko parlors and weathered public housing complexes give off a faintly seedy air.
In reality, crime in the area declined steadily for decades before rebounding slightly after the pandemic. Police data show reports of theft, assault and other offenses in Adachi Ward have fallen sharply since peaking in the early 2000s, mirroring national trends. The perception of danger, however, has been slower to fade.
Following a recent renovation, Takenotsuka Station on the Tobu Isesaki Line now fronts a new shopping complex, with a Starbucks and Muji signaling a touch of urban polish. But a short walk from the station reveals worn multi-tenant buildings packed with hostess bars and Asian restaurants, many operated by the area’s Filipino community and a growing number of Chinese immigrants.
“In 2021, we conducted a survey and found that people’s sense of safety in Takenotsuka was especially low,” says Seiji Okoshi, director of Adachi Ward’s design and planning division. About 68% of respondents rated local safety poorly, a trend most pronounced among adults in their 20s to 40s and those who have lived in the area for a relatively short amount of time.
”Compared with the past, the number of crimes has decreased,” Okoshi says. “Longtime residents tend to feel safer, but for newer arrivals, the sense of insecurity remains high.”
In addition to falling crime rates, juvenile delinquency has been dropping substantially since the early 2000s. Of course, there are also less youth in Japan.
| ANNA PETEK
That gap between statistics and sentiment — what Japanese police refer to as taikan chian, or the public’s perceived sense of safety — has widened nationwide. Surveys show that even as crime remains historically low, more people say they feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, a phenomenon fueled in part by demographic decline and fraying community ties, as well as a constant stream of often misleading social media posts and mainstream media coverage that sensationalizes certain crimes, creating a sense of danger that outpaces reality.
In Takenotsuka, the combination of an aging streetscape, a nightlife economy and a visible foreign population has sustained that image, even as workers and residents describe the area as close-knit and largely peaceful.
Fewer people, less crime
For two decades, Japan’s crime numbers seemed to be in free fall. Recorded Penal Code offenses — covering everything from theft to violent crime — peaked in 2002 at roughly 2.85 million cases, then began a long decline driven by strengthened policing, new regulations and widespread citizen involvement in crime prevention. By 2021, the nationwide tally had dropped to about 560,000, marking a seventh consecutive postwar low.
That trajectory has shifted slightly in recent times. Crime figures have ticked upward for three years in a row, and in 2024 the count rose 4.9% from the previous year to 737,679 cases — still a fraction of the levels seen in the early 2000s.
The recent rise likely reflects Japan’s emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic. As people returned to the streets and daily routines resumed, opportunities for crime increased. Japan’s aging population has complicated the picture: Older adults are now more visible both as perpetrators, particularly in shoplifting cases, and as victims, especially of fraud and cybercrime.
Even so, Japan remains one of the world’s most law-abiding countries, with an incarceration rate of 33 per 100,000 people, compared with 542 for the United States, according to the World Prison Brief database.
Meanwhile, the language of public safety in Japan has evolved over the past two decades. Starting in the early 2000s, the word chian (public security) began appearing in National Police Agency (NPA) white papers, official reports and television news coverage. In academic circles, however, researchers increasingly focused on something less tangible and more personal: taikan chian, the sense of safety people feel in their own lives.
That concept has become central to how authorities assess crime nationwide. In the NPA’s annual reports, perceived safety now appears alongside reported crime totals as a key indicator of national security, a recognition that statistics alone can’t explain why so many people feel uneasy.
In a survey conducted by the NPA in October 2024 of 5,000 men and women ages 15 and older, 76.6% of respondents said public safety had worsened over the past decade, a 4.8-point jump from the previous year. When asked which crimes came to mind as contributing factors, the most common response at 69% was “ore-ore” (“It’s me, it’s me”) telephone scams, investment fraud and similar schemes.
“Falling birthrates are behind the long-term drop in crime,” says Koichi Hamai, a professor of criminology at Ryukoku University’s law school. “Crime follows an age curve: delinquency starts in the teenage years and peaks around age 16, then gradually tapers off. As the number of young people has declined, overall crime has followed.”
Juvenile delinquency has been falling substantially since the early 2000s, prompting the consolidation of youth correctional facilities nationwide. The shift is widely attributed to the dismantling of local delinquent groups — including bōsōzoku motorcycle gangs — and the erosion of the youth subcultures that once sustained them.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the emergence of yami baito — underground part-time jobs solicited through social media and encrypted messaging platforms — has fueled a wave of special fraud schemes and armed robberies, often targeting senior citizens. Some incidents have resulted in serious injuries and even death.
“The situation created the impression of a breakdown in social order rather than a true deterioration in public safety,” Hamai says. “It’s not the same as feeling genuinely afraid to walk outside.”
Highly publicized cases of phone scams and fraud have fueled anxiety among older Japanese residents. The emergence of “yami baito,” or dark part-time jobs solicited through social media, has been a frequent topic in the media.
| ANNA PETEK
In cases linked to yami baito, he adds, some elderly residents have begun canceling their landline phones, leaving them reluctant to answer unfamiliar calls.
“I typically don’t pick up phone calls from unknown numbers,” says Shigeo Ishimori, a 67-year-old sheet metal worker living in Saitama Prefecture. “Some even seem to be coming from overseas.”
Meanwhile, in neighborhoods with sizable foreign communities, some residents report feeling uneasy — often due to unfamiliar languages, customs or behaviors — despite data showing little actual risk. Experts say these perceptions point to challenges around social cohesion and trust as much as public safety, underscoring the need for community engagement alongside policing.
The immigration factor
Around a 30-minute train ride north from central Tokyo is the industrial city of Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture, long known for its foundry and manufacturing heritage and today shaped by rapid urbanization and an expanding international population.
Over the past decade, Kawaguchi has seen the number of foreign residents, drawn by affordable housing and easy access to the capital, grow 1.7 times to around 48,000 — roughly 8% of the city’s total population. Alongside migrants from China, Vietnam and the Philippines, who account for more than 70% of that total, Kawaguchi is home to a small but visible Turkish community of about 1,500 people, many believed to be Kurds who arrived seeking political asylum or work.
Police statistics show crime in Kawaguchi has declined over the past decade. Major offenses such as theft, robbery and assault are not disproportionately high compared with other cities in Saitama Prefecture. More recently, however, cultural differences, neighborhood disputes and isolated incidents have drawn heightened attention, amplified by social media and local politics.
“This has long been an area with a large number of foreign residents,” says Keisuke Miyashita, a 41-year-old Kawaguchi resident and home improvement contractor. “As a result, it feels like we often hear about incidents and problems — scuffles at schools, gatherings that take place after dark, trucks operated by demolition contractors carrying unsecured loads and cases of illegal dumping.”
In July 2023, a disturbance erupted outside a hospital in Kawaguchi after large numbers of relatives and associates gathered following a stabbing incident involving Kurds, in which injured people were brought in for treatment.
The case became a flashpoint for local unease and online hostility toward foreign residents, particularly the city’s Kurdish community. Many Kurdish residents live under provisional release as their asylum cases drag on, a status that offers freedom from detention but no stable legal residency, limited work rights and the risk of deportation.
In February last year, a Kurdish community association in Kawaguchi said at a news conference that it had filed a lawsuit against a Kanagawa Prefecture resident who organized anti-Kurdish rallies, seeking damages and a court order barring the demonstrations as hate speech.
“This initiative is especially important to ensure that children can live safely and receive their education with peace of mind,” said Wakkas Cikan, then president of the Japan Kurdish Cultural Association.
Miyashita, a father of two, says some issues are “easily problematized because of media coverage and social media, unfamiliar words or differences in appearance.”
“When it comes to the Kurdish community, much will depend on how changes to Japan’s refugee application system play out,” he says. “But when I see my children talking with foreign friends, it feels like an issue that cannot simply be resolved through deportation.”
Despite falling crime rates, places that have particularly high numbers of foreign nationals continue to carry a reputation for being unsafe.
| ANNA PETEK
During a policy speech on Oct. 24, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that labor shortages caused by population decline meant “there are sectors that rely on foreign workers, and inbound tourism is also important.”
She added: “However, it is also true that some foreign nationals’ illegal activities or violations of rules have created situations in which the public feels anxiety or a sense of unfairness.”
Japan’s foreign population nearly doubled from 1.97 million in 2004 to 3.77 million in 2024 — still accounting for only about 3% of the total population. Arrests involving foreign nationals, however, peaked in 2005, when police recorded 43,622 criminal cases and 14,786 Penal Code arrests, before both figures declined steadily for more than a decade.
In 2023 — the first full year after Japan lifted pandemic-era entry restrictions — those figures edged higher, to 15,541 cases and 9,726 Penal Code arrests, the latter accounting for 5.3% of all such arrests that year. Even so, that represents declines of about 64% and 34%, respectively, from the mid-2000s. The long-term pattern shows a sustained decrease in crimes involving foreign nationals despite their growing numbers, broadly tracking national crime trends.
Why, then, does public perception of crime so often diverge from the data?
Echo chambers
Back in the 1970s, communications scholar George Gerbner coined the term “mean world syndrome” to describe how heavy exposure to violent or negative media can lead people to perceive the world as far more dangerous, even when crime rates are stable or declining.
“People’s sense of safety often deviates from crime statistics, rising or falling not with overall crime levels but with personal experience and proximity,” says Tatsuhiko Matsuda, a criminal procedure expert and associate professor at Matsuyama University.
Perceived sense of safety tends to fall when individuals are directly affected by crime or hear about incidents nearby, he says. Such episodes sharply reduce not only the victim’s sense of safety but also that of the surrounding community.
“In the age of social media, these effects are amplified as crime stories spread rapidly and fear is easily shared,” he adds.
While information from acquaintances tends to be more accurate, distortion increases in news coverage and is strongest on social media, Matsuda says. Negative trends circulate far more easily than positive ones, fostering a lingering sense that conditions are worsening even when they are not.
“So in essence, it’s all an illusion that doesn’t reflect statistical reality,” Matsuda says. “Social media becomes an echo chamber. People see what they want, and those who don’t want to see something simply don’t.”
If warped perceptions can take root so easily, the question becomes how communities push back. In some neighborhoods, such as Takenotuska, that effort is already underway.
In 2023, Adachi Ward and the Urban Renaissance Agency, a public-sector urban developer, opened a new cafe called Mintopo across the rotary from Takenotsuka Station as a community hub for everyday use and neighborhood interaction. The project aims to invite residents to shape their own community through workshops, events and shared spaces while gradually improving the area’s long-held reputation for poor public safety.
Near Takenotsuka Station is Mintopo, a cafe and community hub meant to foster neighborhood interaction.
| TOMO ISHIWATARI
The initiative gained momentum after the elevation of Takenotsuka Station in 2022 eliminated notoriously congested rail crossings, opening the way for coordinated redevelopment on both sides of the tracks. Officials hope the combination of new public spaces and planned development will help reshape perceptions and breathe new life into the neighborhood.
“We’re running the space on an experimental basis, using it to gather feedback from local residents,” says Ai Hanajima, who oversees Mintopo’s operations. “We host events regularly, such as jazz and classical music concerts, with the goal to see what the neighborhood is missing.”
Before starting work in Takenotsuka, Hanajima says she had some reservations. Hailing from Shizuoka Prefecture, she moved to Tokyo for university and has lived in areas such as Setagaya, Minato and currently Shinagawa — all among the more popular of Tokyo’s 23 wards.
“The image you get of Adachi from some television shows makes it seem unsafe,” she says. “So when I was first told I’d be working in Takenotsuka, I wondered if it would be OK. But in reality, it’s no different from other places I’ve lived — you see the occasional odd person, but that’s true anywhere.”
Hanajima says she has also gotten to know some of the area’s foreign residents, including Chinese and Filipino customers at her cafe. And that familiarity extends beyond her clientele.
“Some of our staff moved here from elsewhere and are residing in Adachi Ward for the first time,” she says. “When we ask why, they mention the good access and relatively affordable rents. In that sense, it’s a convenient and comfortable place to live.”
