(If you remove that line, I'll delete this post.)
That logic forces you to ignore all disagreeing arguments without consideration...
You should move to Venezuela, they're shunning neoliberalism (and also basic necessities like food and electricity)
And there are plenty of Japanese news papers with English editions so you have no excuse.
The author is stupid because he considers as "minor" what is the major cause of poverty in Japan: low wages and no social coverage whatsoever directly caused by Koizumi's lift on irregular jobs contracts, and a huge increase in such low paid jobs as a replacement for a normally paid and work force (I wrote 40%, that's the current figure).
The author is also stupid because he equates poverty to delinquency, but he does not check simple facts like: suicide rate, domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse and other social issues. Here again the rates have been on the increase for the last 2 decades.
And I've been in Japan for close to 20 years, I have three kids here and I happen to read the news in Japanese because I'm a translator.
The author does not know anything about Japan and had no idea what he is writing about.
The author is correct about this. Check out criminality in communist China and Vietnam. Check out criminality in American Japanese who left Japan prior to WWII.
Oh, and comparing criminality rates in the US to any other country in the world is pretty stupid too.
"How about free-market policies? Here the story is more ambiguous, but I still see this as a minor factor at most."
Because of such neoliberal policies, 40% of the work force is now on irregular lowest wage jobs with no job security whatsoever, no medical coverage/pension at all.
Neoliberal policies of the last 2 decades are destroying what boosted Japan prosperity and stability.
The author lives in a dream world where Japan has always been a country with low criminality, obedient citizen etc. But that is only the product of the after-war and the massive US investments to make Japan the first barrier against Asian communism. Now that the socialist block is dead, neo-liberals can destroy at will all the social policies that were created since the 40's.