No Looting in Japan

Respect for property even in the middle of disaster (Photo: EPA)

The latest trend amongst many writers on the internet involves the subject of the absence of looting in Japan. It is common after some type of devastation to witness citizens scrambling and looting local businesses but, in Japan, we are not witnessing this. Why?

 The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.

And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.

This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.

My guess would be that Japan doesn't have a culture filled with a bunch of folks who have an entitlement mentality. In New Orleans, we witnessed an entire culture that's rooted in the idea that everyone is entitled to something and that's exactly the way they behaved in the aftermath.

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