‘Japan is a safe country.’, I hear this statement quite often from various people. Personally, I don’t think it’s as safe as many people think.
Violence against the person, i.e., fighting, is quite low. People can go out at weekends and get extremely drunk and not have to worry about getting into a fight. Unlike my home country, Scotland.
Something that I discovered directly is that ‘fighting’ is quite different in Japan. I’ll tell you something that happened to me and you can be the judge.
Morning time at a busy train station. I was going up the stairs in the ‘up’ section, divided from the much wider ‘down section’ by a hand rail (the ‘up’ section is wide enough for about one and half people).
People were coming down the stairs and a businessman decided it would be quicker to come down in the area I was going up. As a result, he bumped into me quite hard. As he bumped into me he grabbed my right arm: by this time I was 2 steps higher than him.
What to do? My natural instinct at being attacked this way was to twist my arm and break his hold. As I did this I punch him in the chest – not so hard though! He almost tried to charge me but thought the better of it as I had the higher ground. Conflict over.
Was I wrong to punch him? I think, maybe, this is where cultures divide. Most Japanese would say that I was in the wrong for escalating the violence by punching him. Most ‘westerners’ might say I was right to defend myself after having my person attacked. Or maybe I was completely wrong??
What do you think? Please tell me your opinion.
Living in Tokyo 