The United States has a much higher crime rate than Japan.
While the U.S. population is about 2.6 times larger, it recorded 17.2 times more murders in 2019 — 16,425 compared to 950. Needless to say, Japanese tend to enjoy a sense of safety that undoubtedly contributes to our national happiness. So, on July 8, when former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated at a campaign rally, our world was shaken.
But such violence and lawlessness are incompatible not only with Japanese society; they are anathema to any healthy democracy. And it fits into a wider trend. In January 2021, the U.S. witnessed its own shocking act of political violence, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump — at Trump’s urging — stormed the U.S. Capitol, in an effort to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory the previous November. There could be no more blatant attack on U.S. democracy.
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