Japan: Gun Control and People Control
By David B. Kopel
{This article appeared in the December 1988 issue of The American
Rifleman.}

	For gun controllers, Japan is a dream come true.  The law is
simple: "No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword
or swords."       
	Japan's crime rate is very low, and its gun crime rate
virtually nil.  Anti-gun lobbies tout Japan as the kind of nation
that America could be, if only we would ban guns.  Handgun
Control quotes a Japanese newspaper reporter who writes: "It
strikes me as clear that there is a distinct correlation between
gun control laws and the rate of violent crime.  The fewer the
guns, the less the violence."
	But while Japan may be a gun-banner's dream, it's a civil
libertarian's nightmare.  Japan's low crime rate has almost
nothing to do with gun control, and everything to do with people
control.  Americans, used to their own traditions of freedom,
would not accept Japan's system of people  controls and gun
controls.

Japanese Firearms Laws 
	Besides the police and the military, the only group that is
allowed to posses guns is hunters, and that possession is
strictly circumscribed.  The police even check hunters'
ammunition inventory, to make sure that there are no unaccounted
shells or bullets.  
	Hunting licenses themselves are not particularly difficult
to obtain.  A prospective hunter  must take an official safety
course; and then pass a test which covers maintenance and
inspection of the hunting gun, methods of loading and unloading
cartridges, shooting from various positions, and target practice
for stationary and moving objects.  The hunting license is valid
for three years.  Total permit fees for hunting rifles and
licenses are  15000 (about 125 American dollars).  When not
hunting, gun owners must store their weapons in a locker.  
	Trap and skeet shooting are also tightly restricted.  
	Civilians cannot obtain handgun target licenses.  Even
possession of a starter's pistol is only allowed under carefully-
detailed conditions.
	The section of the gun law which specifies who may be
licensed offers no standards, just the vague statement that
licenses must be denied "any person (taking into consideration
also relatives living with him) who there is reasonable cause to
suspect may be dangerous to other persons' lives or properties or
to the public peace."  Thus, the police have broad discretion in
rejecting applicants.
	As in Britain, shotguns are far easier to obtain than
rifles.  In a nation with half the population of the U.S., there
are only 27,000 rifle licensees.  There about half a million 
licensed shotguns, although their numbers have declined by about
20% in this decade.

Crime Control
	Japan's strictly-regulated guns play very little part in
crime.  In 1985, for example, only 35 crimes, including 10
murders, were committed with hunting guns. 
	Although handguns are completely forbidden to civilians,
they still figure somewhat more often in crime.  Handguns were
used in 209 crimes in 1985.  About 2/3 of all gun crimes are
committed by Boryokudan, organized crime groups.  
	As the gun-banners point out, the Japanese crime rate is
dramatically lower than the U.S. rate.  Tokyo, the world's safest
major city, suffers muggings at the rate of 40 per year per one
million inhabitants.    New York City's rate is 11,000.  
	According to government statistics, Japan has 1.5 homicides
per 100,000 citizens each year, and America has 7.9.  Actually,
the gap between U.S. and Japanese homicide rates is not quite as
large as the official statistics indicate.  The real Japanese
murder rate is about twice the reported rate; unlike the U.S.,
Japan does not count an attempt to injure, but which accidentally
causes death, as a homicide.  The F.B.I. also over-counts
American murders, by listing the 1,500 - 2,500 legal, self-
defense fatal shootings of criminals as illegal homicide.  Still,
Japan's actual homicide rate is two to three times lower than the 
U.S. rate.  As for handgun murders, the U.S. rate is 200 times
higher than Japan's.
	Robbery in Japan is about as rare as murder.  Japan's annual
robbery rate is 1.8 per 100,000 inhabitants; America's is 205.4. 
	Do the gun banners have the argument won when they point to
these statistics?  No, they don't.  A realistic examination of
Japanese culture leads to the conclusion that gun control has
little, if anything, to do with Japan's low crime rates.  Japan's
lack of crime is more the result of the very extensive powers of
the Japanese police, and the distinctive relation of the Japanese
citizenry to authority.  Further, none of the reasons which have
made gun control succeed in Japan (in terms of disarming
citizens) exist in the U.S.

	The Japanese criminal justice system bears more heavily on a
suspect than any other system in an industrial democratic nation. 
One American found this out when he was arrested in Okinawa for
possessing marijuana:  he was interrogated for days without an
attorney, and signed a confession written in Japanese that he
could not read.  He met his lawyer for the first time at his
trial, which took 30 minutes.
	Unlike in the United States, where the Miranda rule limits
coercive police interrogation techniques, Japanese police and
prosecutors may detain a suspect indefinitely until he confesses. 
(Technically, detentions are only allowed for three days,
followed by ten day extensions approved by a judge, but defense
attorneys rarely oppose the extension request, for fear of
offending the prosecutor.)  Bail is denied if it would interfere
with interrogation.  
	Even after interrogation is completed, pretrial detention
may continue on a variety of pretexts, such as preventing the
defendant from destroying evidence.  Criminal defense lawyers are
the only people allowed to visit a detained suspect, and those
meetings are strictly limited.  
	Partly as a result of these coercive practices, and partly
as a result of the Japanese sense of shame, the confession rate
is 95%.  
	For those few defendants who dare to go to trial, there is
no jury.  Since judges almost always defer to the prosecutors'
judgement, the trial conviction rate for violent crime is 99.5%. 
Of those convicted, 98% receive jail time.
	In short, once a Japanese suspect is apprehended, the power
of the prosecutor makes it very likely the suspect will go to
jail.  And the power of the policeman makes it quite likely that
a criminal will be apprehended.  
	The police routinely ask "suspicious" characters to show
what is in their purse or sack.  In effect, the police can search
almost anyone, almost anytime, because courts only rarely exclude
evidence seized by the police -- even if the police acted
illegally.
	The most important element of police power, though, is not 
authority to search, but authority in the community.  Like school
teachers, Japanese policemen rate high in public esteem,
especially in the countryside.  Community leaders and role
models, the police are trained in calligraphy and Haiku
composition.  In police per capita, Japan far outranks all other
major democracies.
	15,000 koban "police boxes" are located throughout the
cities.  Citizens go to the 24-hour-a-day boxes not only for
street directions, but to complain about day-to-day problems,
such as noisy neighbors, or to ask advice on how to raise
children.  Some of the policemen and their families live in the
boxes.  Police box officers clear 74.6% of all criminal cases
cleared.  Police box officers also spend time teaching
neighborhood youth judo or calligraphy.  The officers even hand-
write their own newspapers, with information about crime and
accidents, "stories about good deeds by children, and opinions of
residents."  
	The police box system contrasts sharply with the practice in
America.  Here, most departments adopt a policy of "stranger
policing."  To prevent corruption, police are frequently rotated
from one neighborhood to another.  But as federal judge Charles
Silberman writes, "the cure is worse than the disease, for
officers develop no sense of identification with their beats,
hence no emotional stake in improving the quality of life there." 
	Thus, the U.S. citizenry does not develop a supportive
relationship with the police.  One poll showed that 60%  of
police officers believe "it is difficult to persuade people to
give patrolmen the information they need."  
	The Japanese police do not spend all their time in the koban
boxes.  As the Japanese government puts it: "Home visit is one of
the most important duties of officers assigned to police boxes." 
Making annual visits to each home in their beat, officers keep
track of who lives where, and which family member to contact in
case of emergency.  The police also check on all gun licensees,
to make sure no gun has been stolen or misused, that the gun is
securely stored, and that the licensees are emotionally stable. 
	
	Gun banners might rejoice at a society where the police keep
such a sharp eye on citizens' guns.  But the price is that the
police keep an eye on everything.  
	Policemen are apt to tell people reading sexually-oriented
magazines to read something more worthwhile.  Japan's major
official year-end police report includes statistics like
"Background and Motives for Girls' Sexual Misconduct."  In 1985,
the police determined that 37.4% of the girls had been seduced,
and the rest had had sex "voluntarily."  For the volunteers,
19.6% acted "out of curiosity", while for 18.1%, the motive was
"liked particular boy."  The year-end police report also includes
sections on labor demands, and on anti-nuclear or anti-military
demonstrations.
	Broad powers, professionalism, and community support combine
to help Tokyo police solve 96.5% of murders, and 82.5% of
robberies.  In America, the police clear 74% of murders, but only
a quarter of all robberies.  70% of all Japanese crimes end in a
conviction; only 19.8% of American crimes even end in an arrest. 
A mere 9% of reported American violent crimes end in
incarceration.  Compared to the Japanese criminal, the American
criminal faces only a minuscule risk of jail.  Is it any wonder
that American criminals commit so many more crimes?
	Additionally, Japan's tight, conformist social culture does
an excellent job of keeping citizens out of crime in the first
place.  As the head of Tokyo's Police Department explains, "A man
who commits a crime will bring dishonor to his family and his
village, so he will think twice about disgracing them."
	Having lived together for several thousand years without
significant immigration, the Japanese have developed the world's
most homogenous and unified society.  America's ethnic diversity
causes tensions and crime, as the first or second generations of
immigrants sometimes have difficulty adjusting to American ways.
	But even if immigration does cause some crime, our policies
certainly seem more humane than the ethnic policies of Japan. 
When Japan, under severe American pressure, admitted 100
Vietnamese boat people, a leading publication called them "the
sword of an alien culture pointed at Japan."  
	Many Korean families have lived in Japan for longer than
Michael Dukakis' family has lived in America.  Although born in
Japan, the Koreans have "impure" blood, which makes them forever
ineligible for Japanese citizenship
	Partly because the Japanese are so unified and homogenous,
they accept and internalize social controls.  It is this attitude
of obedience and impulse control that matters most in the low
Japanese crime rate.  Guns or not, the Japanese are simply the
world's most law-abiding people.    
	Japanese-Americans, who of course have access to firearms,
have an even lower violent crime rate than do Japanese in Japan. 
Likewise, prisoners in jails in Japan and in America prisoners
have no guns, but American prisoners commit about a hundred
murders annually, and Japanese prisoners none.  
	Dr. Paul Blackman of NRA/ILA points out that if gun control
were really the major cause of the low Japanese crime rate, it
would be impossible to explain why Japan's non-gun crime rate is
so much lower than America's non-gun crime rate.  America's non-
gun robbery rate, for example, is 60 times Japan's.
	If gun control were really such an important factor in
Japan's low crime, it would also be hard to explain why Japan's
murder rate is higher than Britain's (a shooter's paradise
compared to Japan).  Both Switzerland and Israel have many more
guns per capita than even America, and require citizens to own or
train with pistols and fully automatic rifles.  Yet these
countries have less murder and violent crime than Japan, and
almost no gun crime.
	In short, it is not the presence or absence of physical
objects that matters, but how they are treated.  In America,
scaffolding collapses kill about 2,500 workers over the course of
a decade.  Japan, though, has not had a single scaffolding
fatality in the past decade.  Japan has not outlawed scaffolding;
rather, the Japanese business culture simply takes workplace
safety more seriously than does American culture.   

Suicide
	Japan's experience also indicates that gun control has
almost no effect on a nation's suicide rate.  While the  Japanese
gun suicide rate is one-fiftieth of America's, the overall
suicide  rate is twice as high as America's.  
	American gun controllers argue that in America, more males
die from suicide attempts because males are more likely to choose
a gun as a suicide weapon.  Yet in Japan, males are still twice
as likely to die in a suicide attempt as are females.  
	Japan suffers from many double or multiple suicides, called
shinju.  Suicidal parents often kill their children, at the rate
of one per day, in oyako-shinju.  In fact, 17% of all Japanese
homicide victims are children murdered by suicidal parents. Thus,
Japan's tight family structure, which keeps the crime rate low,
is not an unalloyed blessing.
	Even America's leading gun control scholar, Stanford's
Franklin Zimring concedes: "Cultural factors appear to affect the
suicide rates far more than the availability and use of firearms. 
Thus suicide rates would not seem to be readily affected by
making firearms less available."  
	Zimring's observation fits with the evidence in America. 
All ethnic groups have equal access to firearms, but Jews are
less likely to use guns as their suicide method, while Blacks and
Southerners are more likely to use guns.  Although American
Blacks are more likely to use guns in suicide, the black suicide
rate is below the American average.

Gun Culture
	While Japan's gun control has been irrelevant to crime
control or suicide prevention, it has been successful in another
sense: virtually no-one in Japan, except for some carefully-
controlled hunters, has a gun.  Japan is truly a gun-free
society.  Most of the Japanese tourists who shoot at the Hawaii
Gun Club on Oahu have never even seen a gun before.
	Yet it is doubtful that America could imitate even this
limited "success" of Japan's gun control.  Americans possess many
more guns than the Japanese ever did; and, unlike the Japanese,
Americans seem determined to keep their weapons.  
	Japan never had a significant stock of non-military guns, so
gun control was simple to mandate.  But in America, there are
already over 100 million long guns, and 60 million handguns.  In
1985, the Japanese police seized a record high 1,369 illegal
guns.  A big-city police force in the U.S. might confiscate that
many in a few months.
	An island nation, Japan can more or less seal its borders
against illegal gun imports.  Yet even if gun manufacture in
America vanished, and all present guns were confiscated, illegal
imports would quickly rebuild the American gun supply.  If the
United States imported illegal handguns in the same physical
volume it imports marijuana, 20 million handguns would cross our
borders every year. (The legal market for handgun purchases is
about 2.5 million annually.)    
	For the vast majority of Japanese, never seeing a gun is
hardly a deprivation, for Japan developed only the most minimal
cultural attachment to firearms.  
	When Portuguese trading ships arrived in the middle of the
16th century, Japan's many feudal rulers investigated guns for
use in the ongoing civil wars.  Long before the "Southern
Barbarians" (Western traders) ever arrived, Japan had far
outpaced Europe in metallurgy.  Within a few decades, the various
Japanese armies had more, better-built guns than most European
armies.
	A military dictator named Hideyoshi was particularly expert
firearms tactics, and Hideoyoshi finally conquered Japan and
ended the civil wars. In 1588 Hideyoshi decreed the "Sword Hunt,"
and banned possession of swords by the lower classes.  The
pretext was that all the swords would be melted down to supply
nails for a hall containing a huge statue of the Buddha. 
Instead, Hideoyoshi had the swords melted into a statue of
himself.  	
	After Hideoyoshi, the Tokugawa Shogunate took power, and
ruled Japan until the late 19th century.  The Shogunate used guns
extensively in its invasion of Korea.  But after the invasion was
repelled, Japan turned inward, rejecting all forms of
Westernization.  Western contact was limited to a single Dutch
trading mission, which was required to stay on a small island in
Nagasaki harbor.
	The Tokoguwa began the gradual process of eradicating all
Western influence from Japan, including the use of firearms. 
Under the Tokugawa, peasants were assigned to a five-man group,
headed by landholders who were responsible for the group's
behavior.  The groups arranged marriages, resolved disputes, kept
members from traveling or moving without permission, maintained
religious orthodoxy, and enforced the rules against peasants
carrying firearms or swords.    
	The Shogunate's gun control eventually disarmed not only the
peasantry, but also the Samurai warriors.  Gun-smiths were
restricted in the number of apprentices they could adopt, and
eventually sales to anyone besides the military government became
illegal.  
	The Samurai did not mind, though.  While American pioneers
considered their guns a symbolic "badge of honor," the Samurai
revered swords as the true symbol of knighthood.  For combat,
Samurai disdained guns because they allowed fighting from a
distance, rather than face to face, and required the combatant to
assume an undignified crouching position.  Further, there was
little practical use for long guns, since there was almost no big
game to hunt. 	
	Thus, in the 1850's, when Commodore Perry re-opened Japan,
Japanese were still using primitive matchlock guns similar to the
type the Portuguese had introduced over 300 years ago.  Led by
American manufacturers, the rest of the world had replaced
matchlocks with flintlocks.   In 1872, the Samurai and the
Tokugawas were deposed.   The Samurai had used swords to fight
against a conscript army, which was armed with rifles. (Although
the army now had firearms, villagers still did not.) 
	In America, on the other hand, guns were owned by virtually
all adult males.  In response to the tremendous American demand
for guns, America developed the world's leading firearms
companies.  Mass production of firearms led America into the
Industrial Revolution, and became our first major manufactured
export. 
	Japan, however, has never had much of a firearms industry. 
MITI, Japan's Ministry for Trade, is hardly encouraging Japanese
companies to capture the world's growing market for high-tech
plastic/metal alloy guns.  Indeed, Japan has only one handgun
factory.  The manufacturer's main business is heavy electrical
equipment; the guns are just a courtesy for the government. 
Factory spokesmen will not even reveal the factory's location.	

	Without a culture of civilians firearms ownership, the
Japanese never saw strict gun control as anything out of the
ordinary.  And because the crime rate is so extraordinarily low,
the Japanese, unlike many Americans, perceive no need to own a
gun for individual self-defense.  
	Perhaps the most important reason the Japanese voluntarily
accept disarmament is that their government does the same.  After
the disaster of World War II, war was perceived as an unmitigated
horror, and the army was abolished.  
	The police  carry guns, but rarely shoot them, instead using
their black belts in judo or police sticks.  In an average year,
the entire Tokyo police force only fires six shots.  Even if guns
vanished from America, it is difficult to imagine a big-city
American police force firing only six times in an entire year. 
Likewise, there is obviously a strict gun prohibition in American
prisons, but the guards are still armed; the vast majority of
Japanese prison guards carry only police sticks.  
	In a top-down society such as Japan, when the government
disarms itself, it creates a powerful moral climate for citizens
to do the same.  Needless to say, a disarmed military and police
are not likely in the United States, and neither is voluntary
compliance with gun control.
	In many American cities where it is nearly impossible to
legally carry a gun for self-defense, many people do so anyway. 
Many more own illegal weapons at home for self-defense.  Thus,
American gun banners correctly insist that strict gun controls be
accompanied by mandatory jail terms.  The gun banners recognize
that without mandatory sentences, judges and juries would rarely
send their fellow citizens to jail for an illegal self-defense
gun.  Without the certainty of jail, strict controls are often
ignored.   
	But in Japan, the citizens voluntarily comply with the gun
law; accordingly, there is no mandatory minimum penalty for
unlicensed firearm possession.  
	If gun ban is readily obeyed in Japan, but is massively
resisted wherever it appears in America, isn't that an indication
a gun ban might be acceptable in Japan, but wrong in America?

Should America Import Gun Laws Made in Japan?
	In the 1910 debate preceding the New York's Sullivan Law
(the first major American gun control law affecting citizens
entitled to full civil rights) one writer recommended that New
York copy Japan, "where intending purchasers of revolvers must
first obtain police permits, and sales must be reported to the
police."  In 1987, a letter to the editor of The New Republic
announced that Japan has so little crime because "citizens
forsake their right to own guns in return for safety," and that
America must do the same.
	Yet these gun controllers who want America to imitate Japan
fail to understand that one culture cannot simply adopt another's
laws.  Post-war Japan was told to follow American criminal
procedure and anti-trust rules, but soon stopped.  The rules did
not work in a culture used to unlimited police power, and
enamored of giant conglomerates.
	The Japanese Constitution, written by the American
conquerors, has "rights" language far more sweeping than the
American constitution.  But because Japan lacks a tradition of
individual rights or of judicial activism, the Japanese Supreme
Court has been passive, unwilling to enforce the rights
provisions of the Constitution.  For example, the Japanese
constitution, unlike the American one, has strong language
guaranteeing equal political, economic, and social rights for
women.  Yet in practice, American women are far freer than
Japanese women, and are given far more legal protection by their
own constitution.  America made Japan adopt a powerful liberal
Constitution, but it could not make Japanese courts think about
individual rights the way American courts do.
	Gun banners who rejoice that Japan functions without a right
to bear arms should note that Japan functions without other
rights as well.  Not only the laws regarding protection of
criminal suspects, but freedom of speech, of intimate conduct,
and of religion are far narrower than in the U.S.  Japan even has
an official religion, Shinto.  The Japanese military recently
consecrated a deceased military hero as a Shinto god, although
the man was a Christian, and his widow objected vehemently.
	The contrast between the individualist American and the
communal Japanese ethos is manifested in everything from behavior
at sporting events to industrial labor organization.   As a
result, pressure to conform, and internalized willingness to do
so are much stronger in Japan than in America.   This spirit of
conformity provides the best explanation for Japan's low crime
rate.  It also explains why the Japanese people accept gun
control.
	Theoretically, America could adopt a gun ban like Japan's. 
But that ban would be completely alien to our society, which for
over 300 years has had the world's freest, most uncontrolled gun
culture.  Japan's gun laws are part of an authoritarian
philosophy of government that is fundamentally at odds with
America's traditions of liberty.  Such laws have no place in our
country.
