I'm a little skeptical. Many Japanese live in a pretty grinding form of underemployment poverty - "freeter" will get you lots of hits in Western media. Moreover, some truly deprived groups like the urban homeless are almost notorious for generally _not_ engaging in the sort of petty property crime we're talking about that's common in similar demographics in the West.

Those make me lean towards cultural factors.

We tend to underestimate the effect culture can have. It's also why the Japanese don't litter their cities, despite few garbage bins.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/why-japanese-dont-lit...

Yeah, well. Maybe, maybe not. Quoted from a previous discussion:

> I was cycling in Japan for about 2 weeks, just a few weeks ago. I was also impressed in most places by how clean it was, not only in the cities, but more generally speaking about everywhere.

> At some point though, I was cycling along the coast of Mie then Wakayama prefectures, and although the scenery and roads were clean, I had a glance just behind the ramp walk, and realized that behind the trees, in the bush next to the road were hundreds of garbage bags, litter of all sort, really anything, just lying below. There was such a contrast from what my eyes were seeing until, I was shocked.

> In another town several kilometres after (I forgot which place exactly, must have been while cycling up towards Wakayama city), I passed next to a big commercial area on my right. On my left there was a small patch of forest then the sea and again, that forest contained many many plastic bags, full but neatly tied up, every couple of meters or so, for several hundreds of meters.

> I originally thought the first thrashes I saw along the road in the country side where "mistakes", like things flying off the window or pushed by the wind from another place (although there was a lot of garbage anyway). But when I saw these tied up plastic bags, they weren't there by chance, really people throw these bags away on the forest right here. That made me a bit sad, especially since it broke the original image I got.

> (And I haven't spoke about the beaches and seafront all along that peninsula; I wouldn't walk bare foot there).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21240083

When I was in Japan in 2009, every pedestrian in the cities waited patiently at each crossing until the light turned green, even if there were no cars around at all.

However, when the streets were mostly empty, I saw one Japanese man come to an empty crossing, glance around, and cross on red.

Can't generalize much off a single example, but it did make me think peer pressure is probably a factor.

In America, the primary "road safety" I was taught as a kid was "look both ways before crossing the road." I think the Japanese priority is based more on obeying traffic lites, though this is just conjecture from media and my experience.

This said, when people are around there are more likely to be sudden cars as well. It's easier to justify jaywalking at midnight than noon.

Adhering to crossing lights is a very cultural thing. There was a thread that came up about this a week or two ago. Even within the US, perhaps especially within large northeastern cities like Boston and New York, people will cross if there's no traffic (or even if a driver has hesitated for a moment). Whereas on the West Coast people mostly obey the lights.

There's probably a historical influence here to. Most of Western US cities were designed after the introduction of the car, while Eastern cities were designed for carts and walking. That would also help explain why Japan follows them, and Europe is to massive to generalize.

It depends on the situation with traffic and enforcement. At my college town the police were obsessive with writing jay walking tickets. Even if no one is around at all. They really took pride in fining broke college kids $300 for crossing the road.

In LA, there is no jaywalking enforcement, or any petty crime enforcement for that matter. The LAPD is a disproportionately tiny police force that has far bigger fish to fry. People don't jaywalk though because more pedestrians die from drivers here than any other city in the nation.

>At my college town the police were obsessive with writing jay walking tickets. Even if no one is around at all. They really took pride in fining broke college kids $300 for crossing the road.

And police in America wonder why people hate them so much.

It's sad, because sometimes you read articles about a small town's main revenue source being a speed trap. Municipal governments have not gotten the historic funding they've enjoyed from state and federal government over years of being routinely slashed by a political party that enjoys slashing routinely when in power.

So you end up with broke college kids using their student loan money to ultimately pay for trash pickup or other critical city services that were previously paid for by taxation and higher levels of government.

I wouldn't underestimate the effect of culture, I would just tend to assume that something about Japan has caused its culture, rather than culture itself being a primary cause of attitudes towards lost property. In other words, I wouldn't consider "it's just their culture to respect lost property" a useful explanation.

I suppose you’re being downvoted because you’re seemingly hinting at genes having an effect on one’s behavior rather than just their cosmetic traits.

I think the point is that it's a cultural thing, regardless of how fortunate or unfortunate someone is.

I'm sure it plays a role, but there are countries with similar wealth and support systems, but so many things (like the lost property example) are unique to Japan.

It’s more to do with the purity of their culture resulting from low immigration which fosters a high level of mutual trust. Invariably immigration corrupts the hosting nation’s culture with trust absorbing the initial impact.

"purity" is an odd word choice there when "homogeneity" or perhaps more neutrally "uniformity" are equally accurate.

more broadly, when i see/hear this line deployed by westerners in regard to certain east asian countries, I always wonder if such westerners think such statements are generalisable to other nations, or if they have considered whether other specific cultural factors than uniformity are in play and causing/contributing heavily to the supposed higher level of mutual trust.

It's my view that, other factors disregarded, having fewer cultural/ethnic outgroups does not magically result in higher levels of mutual trust in a society. After more than 4 years in Korea I am tired of westerners using Korean society as a shining beacon-like example of cultural/ethnic uniformity in order to air their beefs with immigration in their home countries (and no, that isn't how I interpreted the parent comment; just pursuing a line of thought).

Another interesting thing to consider: the prevalence of general corporate and political malfeasance in Korea and Japan relative to their status as highly developed nations. Certainly no culture-driven concern for the wellbeing of countrymen there.

edit: Ahh just looked at the parent poster's post history and am now happy to issue a big fat Never Mind. At least I got the thought out.

> It's my view that, other factors disregarded, having fewer cultural/ethnic outgroups does not magically result in higher levels of mutual trust in a society.

This is a classic scissor statement to use SlateStarCodex lingo.

Late reply but thanks for that, I'm a casual reader of SSC and its satellite blogs but hadn't come across the Scissor one before.

No, it's a cultural thing. Home burglaries and thefts from cars and shops are fairly common, but you don't take unattended bags and such that are left in the open.