Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone

[damnedifIknow]

It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats.

They wear knee socks, polished patent-leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as 6 or 7, on their way to and from school, and there is nary a guardian in sight.

*What accounts for this unusual degree of independence? Not self-sufficiency, in fact, but “group reliance,” according to Dwayne Dixon, a cultural anthropologist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Japanese youth. “[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others,” he says.

Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone. But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety."

Kaito’s stepmother says she wouldn’t let a 9-year-old ride the subway alone in London or New York—just in Tokyo."


http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/why-japanese-kids-can-walk-to-school-alone/408475/

[Rex]

1. A safe society?

Also they don't have 5 zillion handguns.

[Bucky]

23. Pretty sure this isn't a gun safety issue.

Child predators don't use handguns to accost their victims, obviously.

[Duckhunter935]

2. And here

You would be thrown in jail and lose your kids. Another over reach of laws. Can not even let your kids walk to the park.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Here's another BIG reason. Very strong gun-control laws, very few guns.

A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
In part by forbidding almost all forms of firearm ownership, the country has as few as two gun-related homicides a year.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/

TWO gun-related murders PER YEAR.

Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011

[beevul]

6. Those 'Very strong gun-control laws' don't seem to have effected their suicide rate. N/T

[99th_Monkey]

9. But as both articles make clear, Japan's streets are not daily killing-zones like in the USA.

That is a HUGE plus IMHO.

[beevul]

10. 10 thousand out of 300+ million is hardly a killing zone. N/T

[99th_Monkey]

13. Try telling that to all the mass-shootings victims's families. -nt-

[beevul]

14. Why would I? I am not responsible for their deaths.

That responsibility belongs squarely on the shooter.

[99th_Monkey]

15. BTW, Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011, not just 10,000

Gun deaths are nearly as many as car crash deaths now.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/americas-top-killing-machine/384440/

[beevul]

18. Like I said...

BTW, Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011, not just 10,000

BTW, 20 or so thousand of those, are suicides , which as I said, the 'Very strong gun-control laws' in Japan seem not to be effecting.

Japan has roughly 25k suicides annually, yet strict gun control.

And again, 10k non-suicide gun deaths is hardly a 'killing zone' in a country of 300 million.

[99th_Monkey]

20. Australia's strong gun-control laws dramatically decreased BOTH murder & suicide deaths by gun

firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/

[beevul]

22. And japan is an example of where it isn't working.

Nevermind the fact that you aren't going to get Aussie style gun control in America.

Ever.

[99th_Monkey]

25. Would you personally favor the US doing what the Aussie's did, with the big gun buy-backs, etc.?

Do you even favor US having more stringent background checks, and/or closing the massive
gun-show loophole allowing ANY ONE to waltz into a gun show and buy a deadly assault weapon?

[beevul]

29. "Would you personally favor the US doing what the Aussie's did..."

Would you personally favor the US doing what the Aussie's did, with the big gun buy-backs, etc.?

A government can not "buy back" what was never its own to begin with. No, I don't support 'buy backs', since they're an easy way to get rid of crime guns no questions asked, as well as generally ineffective at stopping gun violence.

Do you even favor US having more stringent background checks...

Feel free.

and/or closing the massive gun-show loophole...

There is no such thing as the 'gun show loophole', and in fact theres no loophole there at all, since congress never intended to regulate private sales whether at a gun show or in the newspaper, when it passed the brady bill in the first place.

...a deadly assault weapon

You take issue with semi-automatic rifles, I take it?

[99th_Monkey]

30. You've made your pro-gun stance more clear. Thank you. -nt-

[beevul]

31. This surprises you?

Mainstream America is pro-gun, so it really shouldn't.

[Rex]

12. That is being ignored imo.

It is obvious the problem in America. 300 million of them.

[Rex]

11. Why would it have anything to do with their suicide rate?

Their culture does not solve every problem with a bullet.

[beevul]

16. Nor does ours.

Their culture does not solve every problem with a bullet.

Nor does ours.

Anti-gun folks do, however, like to lean on gun suicides for their arguments, and Japan disproves those arguments.

[Report1212]

8. They have very low rates of violence across the board, they dont want guns

The cultural aspect is way overwhelming everything else

[99th_Monkey]

17. Cultural or not, strong gun-control measures work, and not just in Japan

In Australia, for example, which also has it's own version of US's "wild-west gun-slinging cowboy" culture.

"Firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/

[Report1212]

19. Australia confiscated 650,000 guns out of 20 million plus population

Meaning australia didnt have a whole lot of guns to begin with, and they also did this at a time when global economy was going up and global crime everywhere including in US was dramatically falling.

Hell in 90s to now US gun crime just about halved and we didnt do any significant laws.

[99th_Monkey]

24. So? I'm not sure what your point is exactly.

Yes, Aussie gov't's 650,000 mandatory gun buy-backs happened, and then the Australian
"murders by gun" numbers dramatically plummeted, by by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide
rate fell by 65 percent.

And not only that, perhaps more importantly, Australia has not had any mass-shooter incidents
since the new restrictions were put in place:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html

Exactly what part of this^ are you disputing again ?

[EX500rider]

32. "Cultural or not, strong gun-control measures work, and not just in Japan"

Mexico and Brazil also have strong gun-control measures...didn't seem to help them a bit.

I think people have to realize violent societies are violent regardless of the laws.

[99th_Monkey]

33. I think people need to realize that doing absolutely nothing, will change nothing.

So we should just all give up, armor up, live in fortresses (IF we can afford one), etc.

Is THIS^ the America you want? It would seem so.

[EX500rider]

35. I didn't say what I wanted..

...I just pointed out that strong gun control hasn't done squat for Mexico or Brazil or South Africa etc...

[bemildred]

4. Social cohesion, we would use a lot more of that.

Unfortunately our political system relies on divisiveness. So things fall apart.

I can remember being a kid in Los Angeles in the 50s and we went anywhere anytime and nobody thought much about it.

[MisterP]

5. battery-farmed human veal in human rabbit hutches 20 minutes' drive from anything

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html

[tblue37]

7. It really does take a village. nt

[ThoughtCriminal]

21. I walked to school almost every day in the 1960's - usually alone

Unless it was raining or snowing. And we played in the neighborhood unsupervised, road our bicycles all over town, and did not carry cell phones (maybe a dime for a pay phone).

The universal answer to that seems to be, well that was the 60's, it's more dangerous today...

Bunk. It is our perception of danger - strongly encouraged by those who want to keep us in a state of fear - that has changed.

[NOLALady]

26. That was also my experience in the 50s/60s.

[hollysmom]

28. you got to ride if it was raining or snowing? Huh, my parents had better things to do than act as

a car service (or so they said) heck once they let us out of school in the eye of a hurricane and it started back up as we walked home stepping over downed trees and power lines. The larger kids had to grab the smaller ones as they blew by us. You had to live over a mile away to gt a bus pass, my luck I lived exactly a mile away.
When I was in high school, my parents put me down to pick up my brother if he was sick, I had to leave my classes to get him at his school which was in the opposite direction than mine, walking all the way. Nothing like walking a sick kid home. Oh well, I was 10 years older than him and my parents did not want to leave work.
Not exaggerating.

[Mojorabbit]

34. My experience also.

Perhaps it is the stress of overcrowding also.

[SheilaT]

27. In 1954/55

I took the public bus home from my half-day kindergarten alone. I was small for my age, and had just turned 5 when the school year started, but pretty quickly the regular drivers on my route knew who I was, and looked out for me.

Yeah, it was different back then.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

36. I live near a very small town in a western state American state.

It a very 'red' area. Lots of guns.

Children walk everywhere with their friends or alone. Very safe and I hope it stays that way.

[egduj]

37. Strange a 6 year old can travel alone,

But they had to implement women-only train cars due to the widespread sexual assaults going on while commuting.