Found another report at the National Police Agency web site (relevant chart on page 2). It clears up a few things.

First of all, it has to be understood that two different numbers are being bandied about, to some confusion. One is the number of cases, the other is the number of people arrested--and subsets from the numbers are tossed about in ways that can be rather confusing.

First is the terms--please help me out here if I am not getting them right. The first term is 総検挙件数, which translates to "whole number of arrests," but I believe refers to the number of separate charges filed. The other term is 総検挙人員, which I translate as "total number of individuals arrested."

The first number is 40,615, the second is 20,007. The strange thing is, the number of "atrocious crimes" appears to have more people arrested than there are charges brought--37 murder charges against 61 people? 255 robbery charges brought against 369 people? I must be missing something.

Anyway, since the news article used stats from the second number of 20,007, let's look at those numbers from this NPA report:

Atrocious crimes (477):

Murder: 61
Robbery: 369
Arson: 13
Rape: 34

Other serious crimes (8,248):

Violent offenses: 633
Theft: 4,555
Intellectual crimes: 497
Sex industry offenses: 93
Others: 2,470

"Special" crimes (11,282):

Immigration-related: 9,211
風営適正化法 (can't translate this): 354
Prostitution: 173
Illegal weapons possession: 98
Total drug crimes: 858
Others: 588

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Okay, let's take a look here. Fully 46%, or nearly half, of all criminals are visa overstayers or otherwise illegal aliens. Kinda puts a damper on the whole "there are so many foreign criminals" numbers, especially when you consider that even with immigration numbers, the crime rate among foreigners is still lower than that of Japanese! This means that the terrible foreign crime threat is completely bogus--not counting immigration violations (only fair, as Japanese by definition cannot commit them), foreign residents are actually less likely, by half, to commit a crime than a Japanese is.

Also, let's take a little look at the number quoted in the article:

"Sixty-one were charged with murder, 369 with robbery, and 13,357 were charged with offenses such as prostitution, illegal possession of weapons, or overstaying their visas."

Where did they get the "13,357" number? Counting prostitution, illegal possession of weapons, and overstaying visas, you get 9,482--so what were the other 3,875?

Well, here is where they made an error (to be generous). That 13,357 number comes from the first set of numbers, where the total is 40,615--yep, they're mixing and matching to no logical tune. Taking some numbers from one table and other numbers from a different table, and mixing them up.

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Then there is the country of origin.

Again, taking from the second table where the total is 20,007, the offenders fall into these nationalities:

Chinese: 8,996
Korean: 1,793
Filipino: 1,333
Brazilian: 1,224
Vietnamese: 718
Thai: 699
Peruvian: 573
Iraqi: 573
Iranian: 410
Myanmar (-ese?): 327
Malaysian: 315
Others: 3,619

Strangely enough, when counted on the first chart, with the 40,615 total, Chinese come first, then Turks--who scored up 5,353 offenses with 5,334 of them being theft (something fishy there)--then Brazilians, Koreans, Filipinos, Columbians (also nearly all theft charges), Vietnamese, and so on. I can only imagine that they must be counting each item stolen as a different charge, otherwise how could a couple dozen turks get arrested more than 5,000 times? I would love to pick apart their counting methodology here!

There are more numbers to be deciphered in the report, but the one point that stands out is that the large majority of criminals are of Asian origin--including probably most Peruvians and Brazilians, who are Japanese descendants. As you may recall, Japanese politicians, seeing the need for an influx of foreign workers, tried to be clever and allow descendants of Japanese immigrants to South America to 'come home,' apparently thinking that they would fit right in. Not so.

In any case, perhaps as many as half of all of these foreign offenders would be relatively hard to pick out from the Japanese crowd. And, of course, the Chinese are particularly noticed by Japanese politicians like Shintaro Ishihara, who portray them as a deadly crime wave threatening the entire country--which makes me wonder how many get accused of, and charged for, crimes they did not actually commit.

I recall back in the 80's when any foreigner was seen as a criminal, and there were stories of Japanese criminals who tried to fake being Westerners when they committed crimes. One case in particular was funny, as a Japanese thief tried to rob a store, but mangled his English so badly that he was literally laughed right out of the store.

It makes me wonder, however, how many of those "Chinese" crimes are Japanese criminals faking it, knowing that the environment is receptive to scapegoating.

And then there is the counting of permanent residents who are in fact Japanese in all but name, but live in Japan for generations as foreigners--Koreans, mostly--but who are counted to add to the "foreign" crime wave.

All in all, a sad twisting and mangling of numbers to suit a thoroughly racist political climate.