Quote Originally Posted by Golgo_13
One thing no one is willing to mention is the crimes being committed by Chinese and other foreignors in Japan. Are we in serious denial? Some merchants would rather refuse service than to risk and problems.

It creates a very very poor impression upon the Japanese when foreigners commit crime and makes headline news. Their feeling is, if you are a guest in someone's house, you behave yourself.
The problem here is that you use the word "foreigner" putting everybody in the same category. I think that people staying in Japan should be divided, if not by country, by purpose of staying in Japan. Crimes tend to be commited by people who are not trying to adapt to Japanese society, are not in Japan of their own will (or reluctantly, to make money), or are US soldiers stationed there (again, not because they want to adapt or live there, but not really for money either).

I am pretty sure that if we analyse the status f people committing (serious) crimes, we will find that the vast majority are either illegal or economic immigrants (+ US soldiers). There are probably few people with a working visa (which requires that the sponsoring company pays a salary of at least 250.000yen/month), or with a spouse, investor, diplomatic, religious or permanent visa.

I would be really interested to know the percentage of crimes committed by visa status as well as by country (so as to see how high is the crime rate of people coming from developping countries compared to others).

What if the Japanese went to China and committed crimes? Do you think the Chinese would still treat them well?
Well that already happened, and not just during WWII. Lots of stories of Japanese businessmen "partying" with prostitutes in China.