Criminal activity in Japan is at a postwar peak -- the police reported 2.9 million violations of the Penal Code in 1999, 7.9 percent more than in the previous year. In the same period, the arrest rate fell to a postwar low. The Justice Ministry has just confirmed this bleak picture in a white paper submitted to the Cabinet, which also reveals that 1999 saw more crime victims than in any year since the war: some 1.89 million, excluding traffic-accident victims. No wonder calls are mounting that greater concern be shown for the long-ignored needs of crime victims.

Perhaps it stems from Japan's traditional emphasis on "gaman" (endurance or forbearance) as a virtue, but despite occasional token legal advances and many unfulfilled promises, the plights of victims of such serious crimes as stalking, rape, assault and murder -- and the plights of their families -- continue to arouse only minimal official concern. For the similar white paper on crime it submitted one year ago, the ministry interviewed victims for the very first time. (It noted then that more than 60 percent of murder victims' relatives continued to suffer from trauma even after the killers had been convicted.)

A group representing a 150-member national association of crime victims and their families managed to obtain 15 minutes of Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka's time last week to make a renewed plea for greater government assistance with medical and other costs. Mr. Yasuoka reportedly promised to "consider" ways to meet their request, but that response offers little cause for optimism. Despite earlier pledges of improvement, the group believes, perpetrators continue to receive more legal protection than their victims.