It has been said in Japan that water and safety are freely available

The collapse of Safety Myth

It has been said in Japan that water and safety are freely available. As for water, in the first place, Japan is one of natural abundant countries in the world. Since forests cover almost seventy percent of the whole land, water can be obtained from rivers running trough the Japanese soils. Of course there have been a lot of floods and some of the rivers were once much polluted resulting from industrial developments, we have been able to drink clean-up water from faucets almost freely, by paying a small sum of water charges.

Safety is also taken as a matter of course. The Japanese people have a lack of sense to pay money for safety. Namely safety is widely regarded as something given for nothing. The Japanese people strongly believe that the country is the safest in the world. We can find the Japanese overconfidence in safety by seeing a word describing it, "Safety Myth". They tend to like making such myths as "Land Myth" or the belief that the land prices keep rising, and "Finance Myth" or the trust that the Japanese financial systems never collapse. Safety Myth is one of those categories.

Before thinking of the reasons why such safety myth has been developed in Japan, I have to mention the definitions of safety. I guess that you can easily define its meaning that it's the state of being safe, or oppositely there is no danger. However theses definitions are not enough. Since a sense of safety differs from country to county, or from generation to generation. Even the people in one country have different ways of feeling toward safety because they have different personal backgrounds. To take one thing, some feel it safe, some don't. So it's important to see which level of safety in terms of thinking of the meaning of safety.

There are some kinds of safety we can classify ranging from political to social safety. Let's see each of safety simply I categorize here. First of all, to see political safety, it means that we have no military threats. Especially as for Japan, the country is surrounded all by sea. It has been difficult for enemies to attack directly the mainland although there had been some trials to invade Japan in its history. All of the attacks ended up failure because of the natural barrier of sea. Compared with the Europe countries contrarily, each of the countries is so adjacent in the huge continent that many inland battles have happened. As a consequence, military risks are beyond the imagination of the Japanese people. Today military technologies make it easier to make direct attacks to the small island. But the people of Japan still don't seem to feel any military risks partly because of the geographical advantages, partly because Japan is under the umbrella of the American military protection.

To see the social risks next, the risks here have something to do with ordinary life. It is no exaggeration to say that the safety in life is mainly attributable to the Japanese police. The police boxes or familiar as Koban located everywhere in towns are a preventive factor for domestic safety. The police men we usually see in the boxes are also helpful to the safe life in Japan although a lot of police scandals have come to light recently. Thanks to no-gun policy, Japan has become regarded one of the safest countries in the world.

Let's narrow the focus point from country and social safety to domestic or individual one. It seems to me that the Japanese people have disposition to avoid fights. This may come from a group-oriented mind which is one of the Japanese characteristics. To live in a group, it's necessary for them to harmonize each member of the group. Even though one becomes disgusted with another member, he or she puts up with the member instead of quarreling against. The group-oriented minds of the Japanese people help not expose them to legal risks.

After seeing some levels of safety, you come to understand the reasons why Safety Myth has been developed in Japan. There are complex reasons ranging from geographical advantages, Japanese culture to social systems. To think twice, however, this safety myth has been built just recently. More specifically, it was built after World WarⅡ although the geographical and cultural features that have been long developed are attributable to the making of the myth. It seems to me that the Japanese people have been hallucinated that Japan is long safe since ancient times like ordinary myths. Although there have been almost no direct invasions, Japan had experienced so many in-land battles. Although Japan had a very peaceful period of Edo era(AC1603-1868), there had been so much social uncertainty before and after the period. Although there is a good culture that harmonizes nature, Japan had experienced a lot of disasters. Indeed as recorded, all of the disasters involving more that 10,000 deaths happened before World WarⅡ. In one sense, the safety has been built in these decades be learning the lessons. In another, "Danger past God forgotten"

The Safety Myth, which has been developed just recently in Japan, however, are going to collapse. In national safety, for example, now is time when a missile(recognized officially as a satellite) flied over the land of Japan or there is political uncertainty around the Taiwan strait. Socially the number of crimes has drastically been increasing in recent years such as the symbolic incident of the sarin gas attack by the Aum cult in the Tokyo subways. Individually as the Japanese people have become conscious of legal matters, there have been more lawsuits even in personal troubles, which was once before settled out of court. In business, of course, we have been seeing more and more risks than ever. Even in natural disasters such as the Hanshin Great earthquake. Although land jolts are acts of God or out of our control, overconfidence in the security might have caused more damages. From these recent incidents it's time to learn something. There is at least one lesson that we have to keep in mind. It's that Japan is no longer safe. Exactly saying, Japan has not long been safe except certain periods. By giving up the idea of Safety Myth, we should face up to reality and understand what risk we are exposed to.