Also many Gulf states and cities (Dubai, Sharjah, etc.).

Japan is one of the most racially homogenous countries on earth.

That sounds a bit racist, like "certain racial setups can live in prosperity, but as soon as you get certain other races in the mix, you should abandon all hope of having good quality of life". I prefer to think mutable policies have more to do with it than immutable genetic traits.

Bluebirds tend to prefer the company of other bluebirds

You mean, they don't create fictional 'races' of bluebirds and then spread hate about each other, including by asserting it's somehow inevitable? Oh, to be a bluebird rather than a Hacker News reader today.

Bluebirds tend to prefer the company of other bluebirds.

Lions prefer lions. Hyenas prefer hyenas. They coexist. But they prefer the company of their own. And that's ok. It is nature.

No need to add complexity. It's nature. Always has been. Always will be.

As far as real world examples, there does seem to be evidence of an unfortunate “safe city” axis requiring either racial/cultural homogeneity or extremely heavy handed authoritarianism.

Ironically, America in the 90s and early 2000s seemed to be approaching a sweet spot where cultural expectations and “mild” authoritarian policing were successful at crushing urban crime rates. This whole thread is full of longtime West Coasters bemoaning how much better city life was in “the good old days” of 10-15 years ago. Odd how there’s zero political will to simply go back to what worked.

So you point out that it doesn’t match your priors and double down on not exploring whether your priors are correct. I find it more useful to be curious whether the parent’s stats are correct.

Also worth pointing out that homogeneity isn’t only along an axis of race. Example: There are plenty of Mexican Americans who are extremely racist towards newer Mexican immigrants to their neighborhoods. LATimes has done several pieces about this dynamic. People will always find reasons to put other people in categories.

Also worth pointing out that the society in Japan is more overtly racist towards outsiders of any race. My source is a life-long friend (white American living in Japan for 15+ years) who overheard lots of conversations when the locals think he doesn’t understand their words.

America has been a “melting pot” for a while, so we have moved our racial/homogeneity issues at least one layer below polite discussion. Most Americans will put up a façade about not being racist, but don’t actually put any effort to align their behaviors.

>America has been a “melting pot” for a while, so we have moved our racial/homogeneity issues at least one layer below polite discussion

Sadly, I think identity politics has tossed the melting pot ideals aside. It encourages zero sum thinking where different groups are enemies and relative sucess is what matters. This means pulling others down is just important than lifting people up. Unfortionatly, it is easier to pull people down than lift them up.

Crab bucket mentality in practice.

Racism hasn't damaged melting pot ideals? It's really hard to overlook centuries of it, and the widespread increase in overt racism in the last 7 years - including on Hacker News.

I suppose it has, although I do wonder why now. It seemed like the ideal was strong enough to stand up before the civil rights movement.

My theory racism and identity politics have a positive feedback relationship. That is to say identity politics is counterproductive at bringing about a less biased society.

There are plenty of people who hate other people for various reasons. We have a hot war with hundreds of thousands of people right in now in Europe, without any racial component involved. I fail to see how this provides any justification for racism though.

Yes, Japan is a very high-conforming and ethnically homogeneous society. It is also a low-crime society. However, to derive just from that that absence of racial homogeneity alone leads to high crime makes no more sense than claiming that not using logographic scripts leads to violence - since Asian society are generally less violent than, for example, the US. You need to do much more work than just picking one difference and attribute everything to it.

Perhaps "Japan is one of the most culturally homogenous countries on earth" would have been more helpful? It wouldn't surprise me if that was the intent of the comment either. The way people discuss and conceptualize "race" and "culture" is quite complicated. They are often muddled together in a way that can be hard to untangle.

* * *

No relation to criminality, there are many countries with racially diverse backgrounds and peaceful communities. Sydney is one of them and Sydney has both Whites and Asians. Singapore has a lot of all of them.

It’s not the homogeneity.

Exactly as I said, violence is not due to the mix between Asians and Whites, therefore it’s not mixing people that causes violence. It’s inviting the wrong people.

Please read the first line in the main body of your article and you’ll find the answer. It’s so predictable it’s more accurate than science.

Sorry, but it sounds like you’re saying that allowing the “wrong” type of immigrant is what causes violence and using Cronulla as evidence?

Cronulla was a one-off event almost 20 years ago, was extremely shocking and out of the ordinary, and as far as I can remember no-one died. As such, it’s not a great example of anything much, other than the fact that ethnic tensions existed between white and Arab communities in Australia in the mid-2000s (which is not all that surprising given the context of 9/11, the Iraq War, etc)

I do agree with your first point, however, that Sydney is a good example of one of the most multicultural cities in the world being quite safe, without requiring authoritarian policing (lockouts and drug dogs in train stations aside)

Are you trying to hint a racist ideology, that the "wrong people" are some race you don't like. Maybe individuals make their own choices, and the ones who choose to be racists are the wrong people. What a dream if they all left for their own country.

Look, absolutely everyone in this entire page is trying to dodge strictly enforced DDR Germany-style taboo about saying the truth, so I’m not gonna say what is the obvious source of most criminality in the West.

But I’ll stop you right there from swaying the blame onto someone else and reaching entirely false conclusions. What crime is NOT due to:

- Crime is not due to poverty. Plenty of poor cities who aren’t violent.

- Crime is not due to previous crime. Put white felons on an island and you get Australia, as the joke says.

- Crime is not due to high-density area. Tokyo.

- Crime is not due to immigration or displacing population. Ukraine migrant kids who spoke French astonishingly fluently in 6 months, a better score than all kids from “other” French backgrounds.

- Crime is not due to mixing population. Singapore.

Each of them is easily proven by finding great counter-examples of constructive people being moved/concentrated to place X or Z and not having high criminality.

It must be something else, something which can be found in all evoked areas and not found in peaceful areas, but I’m not going to say it.

Is it water?

It.. sounds like you are hinting that you think the violence is caused by a specific ethnicity of people? Because if you're not, it'd be good to make that clear. Maybe you're saying it's a result of imported cultural values that encourages violence?

Also, your list doesn't mean some combination of those things can't result in worsening incidence of violent crime.

My own belief is that its some combination of:

- Extreme wealth inequality

- High cost of living

- High incidence of poverty (relative to the aforementioned cost of living)

- Poor social safety net

- Poor community cohesion and trust

- Individualistic cultural attitudes (as opposed to collectivist cultural attitudes)

- Poor public protection

- Easy access to drugs (including alcohol)

I think the drugs just become a symptom of the problem; people get addicted because they are suffering (see rat park). They develop antisocial behaviours, which reduces community cohesion and trust. The city then becomes less happy overall, and it becomes a cycle

> Also, your list doesn't mean some combination of those things can't result in worsening incidence of violent crime.

When kicked out of the front door, try to come back through the backdoor?

You can create convoluted science that a combination of those factors leads to violence. Since it’s a combination, it’s even less provable, a correlation doesn’t cause causation, and I’ll keep finding counter examples, to which you will find even more convoluted reasons.

But there is a much, much simpler hypothesis, and for my part it explains the world with accuracy and predictability. What defines a science is its ability to predict the future based on some inputs.

So, my stance is to never make a decision based on prejudice, which is satisfying in terms of humanism, but don’t forget that people will reliably get killed, mugged and raped, and in quantity, if you don’t watch out for the thing-I’ll-not-say which was ever predictable. And it’s both our responsibility to put our family out of harm’s way, and an incredible feat of the XXIth century that we’re feeding our own relatives into a crime machine that reliably gets them killed or raped.

Speaking from experience. But everyone who has a grave opinion on this topic has, someday, seen a relative crossing the path of those people.

People say this but are never able to offer any evidence for this claim. The fact is that Japan is much less homogeneous than white westerners tend to believe, and has liberalized immigration substantially in recent years.

You’ll hear stats about the high percentage of Japanese people in Japan, but those statistics invariably refer to Japanese citizens, not ethnic Japanese.

Yes, but Japan isn’t safe and harmonious because of racial makeup, it’s save and harmonious because of cultural inclinations. In Japan, the individual defines themselves with a much greater emphasis on their place in society. Societal good is given far more importance than in other countries. In Western nations, individualism is so strong it borders on narcissism, in my opinion, and a consideration for society always takes back seat to the individual. Countries like the US will never achieve the social cohesion of Japan, not because of racial makeup, but because we are too obsessed with ourselves.

At least, that’s my belief as an American who has spent several years living in Japan.

>Japan isn’t safe and harmonious because of racial makeup, it’s save and harmonious because of cultural inclinations.

Perchance those things are related?

Unless you believe racially japanese people are significantly different to people from other asian countries. No.

What really are the genetic basis to say Japan is a country that's markedly different from other asian populations?

The people living in Japan have not lived there for long enough for their genetic to become too different from those of other asian countries. Culture on the other hand changes much more rapidly. Culture is the "genetics" of society, it is passed down from generation to generation and it mutates and these mutations are also hereditary... it's just much faster than biological processes.

But ultimately, it seems very unlikely (and as far as I know, there's very little evidence that suggests this is the case) that race and genetics will have a huge effect on culture. Specially given that countries with similar genetic populations will have vastly different cultures.

> The people living in Japan have not lived there for long enough for their genetic to become too different from those of other asian countries.

The Ainu’s skin tone is more like Caucasians than East Asians and the majority population, (Yamato?) are noticeably shorter than the Koreans to whom they are most closely related. There’s clearly been enough isolation, for long enough, for some differentiation. That’s not to say the distribution of traits doesn’t overlap. We’re not talking Sardinians and Swedes here, never mind Bantu and Basque.

A lot of the pros and cons of Japanese society could apply to Korean society too. There is a lot of overlap.

Seoul, like Tokyo, could also be described as a HNer’s dream city. Ultra safe, ultra clean, amazing transit. And like Tokyo, a city like Seoul could never exist in the US for similar reasons.

(Then again, cars and public transit coexist somewhat harmoniously in Seoul, with cars being an aspirational item for many Koreans, so maybe it’s not a dream city for the banallcars HNer crowd)

I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people to believe that evolution can indeed affect our brains just like everything else.

Keep in mind the culture of the various regions could easily cause fast natural (?) selection. I’m no expert on Japan’s history, and even less so on China/Korea/etc. I know enough that Japan had periods of pretty constant war, and that the young and the brash would essentially volunteer to be mercenaries. It seems to me that could pretty quickly weed out the most aggressive genes in a population. It would be different, of course, if soldiers were conscripted instead.

That’s just one example and as I said, I’m not a historian. Another example would be America. People always come up with silly reasons why we became the dominant world power. In my opinion the reason is simple: the people that immigrated here were risk takers, hard workers, and dreamers. Their kids would inherit those genes.

So, I’d say culture begets genetics which begets culture…

I would suggest you read up on the history of mercenaries worldwide and the history of youth volunteering for wars worldwide. These are by no means traits particular to Japanese people. I would also suggest you read up on the United States global positioning before and after WW2. It was regionally isolated from the brunt of the war, which allowed it to loan money and sell weapons and resources at very favorable rates for the majority of the war. This can’t be excluded from a simple explanation of its global dominance.

I'm very well aware of what people's argument is for why the US became dominant, and I'm sure it was a factor.

Yet that didn't happen to other regionally isolated countries like Mexico or Brazil - hell, or even Canada.

And yes, youth always volunteer for wars. Like I said, I'm not a historian and my example was just an example of how things could guide selection. That said I don't think many countries had something similar to what ronin, or even samurai, were. It was a fairly unique system.

China's Great Leap Forward would be another example of something that could guide who lived to procreate and who didn't.

"I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people to believe that evolution can indeed affect our brains just like everything else."

because publicly acknowledging this obvious reality comes at a cost: you WILL be attacked. most people do not want to be attacked and would rather take the easier route of pretending to not notice this or anything that's going to cause them a problem.

they have even done studies with 1 day old babies where the scientist holds the baby's nose shut and guess what, babies of different races react in different ways. same as when they take baby boys and girls and put them in a room the boys go for the toy trucks and the girls go for the dolls. i'm sorry but that study doesn't need to happen if you don't live in an ivory tower and have to act like a politician because you have so much money to lose for having the wrong opinion.

You think that cultural values are influenced by race? I certainly don’t. Culture a construct, not genetically determined. Let me put it this way, if you waved a wand to make America as racially homogenous as Japan, it would still have all the same discord because it would still all be Americans, and American culture is narcissistic and sociopathic.

I’d say it’s more influenced by having common ground with your fellow citizens, and race is one potential factor.

It’s why even in America you see racial/ethnic blocs and enclaves form. Hence the mentions of an “Asian voting bloc” or “Hispanic voting bloc”, during elections. Would we be hearing about such things if the US was monoracial? Even among many divisions, it would be one less divisive factor.

(yes, I’m aware in the past things were carved up even among whites - such as Italians vs. Irish etc)

Jamaica is also one of the most racially homogeneous countries on earth. Yet safety there is the opposite from Japan.

This is a myth - Japan does not collect data on ethnicity/background [1], so we just don't know. Japan has a (to foreigners) invisible and extensive caste system [2] and a long history of looking down at Japanese of Korean background (who are quite common, but again, there are no official stats by Japan - South Korea tracks about 800k people in Japan [3]), plus all those Japanese of Brazilian background (Brazil estimates at least 1.4 million of those [4]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34615972

[2] https://qz.com/2029525/the-20-countries-that-dont-collect-ra...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Brazilians

Your sources have little to nothing to do with the racial homogeneity in Japan although your initial point is correct - Japan does not collect data on ethnicity.

A glance at Japan's history and geography will tell you that Japan is an incredibly homogenous country as far as ethnicity goes.

'Racial homogeneity' is not a thing in biology

Furthermore, up until 1869 Hokkaido was a separate kingdom peopled by the Ainu - Japan has a long history of exchanging people with Korea. It's not some fabled walled-off kingdom, it's a regular country full of regular people

And Fremont or Cupertino are murder capitals of the world by that logic? Nah. Even unskilled immigration reduces local crimes rates in US. Kind of obvious, people who made an effort to come to a country tend to try hard to make it work.

I'm all for adopting policies that resemble that of Japan/Tokyo. However, half the country would accuse you of autocratic behavior and infringing on constitutional rights.

I am having hard time thinking about any example where San Francisco government did not implement some policy because the other half of the country didn't like it. If anything, that'd be even more reason for them to implement it, just to "own" "those stupid idiots".

The San Francisco government is not the only source of policy in San Francisco. If the San Francisco government wanted to implement strict gun control like they have in Tokyo, for example, they would be blocked by the Supreme Court judges elected by the rest of the country.

> Supreme Court judges elected

Not how that works.

I'm well aware of how it works. The country votes into office the politicians who nominate and vote for the Supreme Court judges.

If I was being more careful I could have written the country "indirectly elects" the Supreme Court judges. My basic point still stands, San Francisco policy is in many ways set by the entire country.

Err, SF had strict gun control for years. Getting carry permit in the whole Bay Area has been mostly a "who do you know" thing. Recent SCOTUS decisions made that approach theoretically illegal, but in practice the city is still requires long procedure to get a permit, and is not very generous with permits:

So far the city is processing 72 applications, and they expect to get nearly 100 to 200 more over the next year. Which is very different from the four we processed in the past 10 or so years

Source: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/san-francisco-begins-is...

Certainly 100 permits a year are not going to change things much and definitely four issued in the last 10 years didn't, and if anything sounds like "strict gun control", then four people allowed to carry in 10 years is it.

Some public policy can't be effectively implemented on the local level. Tokyo's gun control is it's nation's gun control.

Nah, the far right are quite happy to point to Tokyo as an example of the superiority of an ethnically/culturally homogenous society.

Singapore is a better example, but requires a form of authoritarianism to pull off that would be unacceptable to both the right and the left.

It would only be unacceptable to the right because that hypothetical authoritarianism would apply equally to themselves

What if ethnically/culturally homogenous societies are just superior?

I’d like to think they aren’t, other people are just used as scapegoats to blame bad things on

You don't have the courage to be openly racist?

Exactly which race is his statement advocating as superior? There's a bunch of ethnically homogeneous nations in the world, and their ethnicities are quite different from each other. Japanese are not the same ethnicity as Norwegians.

I don't believe the low crime levels in Japan/Tokyo are the result of policy decisions. I suspect they are the result of a community-oriented culture enforced by other means.

No, that couldn't be further from the truth. The police have extremely prominent placement in Japanese society. Look up "kōban" ("police boxes")[0]. If you visit Japan, you'll see these things everywhere, on every street corner.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%c5%8dban

I don't see how a cop sitting in a little box on various street corners equals "extremely prominent placement in society". In fact, I rarely see cops on patrol in the city, unless there's something going on.

Which policies? Which constitutional rights, and are they unimportant to you?

Japan is in the middle of demographic collapse, obviously you don't see a lot of murders in retirement communities (though LA and Half Moon Bay shooters gave it a try a few months back).

If you think Tokyo is a "retirement community", you've obviously never been here.

As someone else mentioned, Japan is one of the most culturally homogenous societies in the world.

Japan takes few immigrants, but those that do immigrate there are expected to be guests and live within the established norms of Japanese culture and society.

That’s the opposite mindset of the US - especially the liberal leaning areas, where the society is expected to accept and respect diversity and differences.

You can immigrate to Japan as a Westerner (or even as a outwardly similar looking East Asian from Korea or China, etc), live there for decades and become fully assimilated into Japanese society, even gain citizenship, but still be treated as an outsider - not necessarily disrespectfully.

You could probably say the same for other East Asian countries such as Korea, China, Taiwan, etc.