lack of alcohol related violence in Japan

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lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-09-24

I seem to remember reading that there is less alcohol related violence in Japan compared to Britain. Can somebody provide me with a link to statistics proving this, or is it just an urban myth?

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - uisukii - 2013-09-24

could it be that people are less likely to report/involve the police in such matters in japan as they may in britain? statistics can provide false positives based on how they are derived...

which is to say i have no idea and couldn't find any relevant data using my phone (・へ・)

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - lardycake - 2013-09-24

A someone from the UK this doesn't surprise me at all.

If I go into town on a Friday night there are always people yelling and being idiots. I often see fights and have had drunk people attack me for no reason on multiple occasions.

Went to Italy and at 9PM on Friday night families were by the river eating dinner and drinking responsibly. Great atmosphere and very different to what I'm used to in the UK.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - toshiromiballza - 2013-09-24

You really need a graph/study to believe this? This is as much a "myth" as evolution is.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - NightSky - 2013-09-24

I'm almost certain this is going to be true, although I don't have any statistics to share. I've been out a lot in tons of places in Japan and lots of places in the UK, and I've seen plenty of fights in the UK and very very few in Japan. I think its just a cultural thing.

I was in a night club in Shanghai once and 3 different fights all broke out at exactly the same time at in three different parts of the club. That was interesting.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-09-24

toshiromiballza Wrote:You really need a graph/study to believe this? This is as much a "myth" as evolution is.

I was debating it with some guy on Facebook... He just wouldn't take no for an answer and argued that alcohol per se caused people to be aggressive (!)

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - SomeCallMeChris - 2013-09-24

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:
toshiromiballza Wrote:You really need a graph/study to believe this? This is as much a "myth" as evolution is.
I was debating it with some guy on Facebook... He just wouldn't take no for an answer and argued that alcohol per se caused people to be aggressive (!)

Well, that's definitely not true. It's definitely been shown that the effects of alcohol (and most mind-altering substances, really) are heavily influenced by cultural expectation. In -most- places in the west, alcohol doesn't make people violent ... it makes them more talkative, more prone to laughing, more sexually available ... more uninhibited in general. In some local cultures, yes, 'uninhibited' also includes more prone to fighting.

All this despite the fact that it's chemically a -depressant- and hardly likely to have those effects naturally, but in the west, drinking and feasting having gone together for centuries so it has deep cultural roots as a festive substance.

There's a case study of a particular tribe in South America that acquired alcohol brewing without picking up any western culture, and they developed a cultural custom of all coming around the fire to drink and talk quietly, and as the alcohol takes effect they separate and sit quietly by themselves. (Which is arguably a more natural effect of alcohol.)

Proper scientific double-blind studies have been done too, that show that whether people -think- they are drinking alcohol or think they -aren't- drinking alcohol is entirely the deciding factor for 'uninhibited' behavior. (The worsening of motor control and slowed reaction times, however, are actual chemical results.)

I did learn about this in a college class, and I'd link you to the textbook that cites the relevant papers, except that it was something like 'drugs and society', and a search on that on amazon turns up a lot of textbooks on the theme, dozens of editions each of dozens of actually different books and I don't see my book cover. I suppose all of them probably cover many of the same studies though.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - tashippy - 2013-09-24

Oh. Was the class called Drugs and Society or the textbook or both? Either way, interesting stuff.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - Mcjon01 - 2013-09-24

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:There's a case study of a particular tribe in South America that acquired alcohol brewing without picking up any western culture, and they developed a cultural custom of all coming around the fire to drink and talk quietly, and as the alcohol takes effect they separate and sit quietly by themselves. (Which is arguably a more natural effect of alcohol.)

Sounds a lot like this:
http://gladwell.com/drinking-games/

It's a pretty interesting story.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - tashippy - 2013-09-24

Let's rename this thread:
Lack of alcohol leads to increase or decrease in language learning?

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - SomeCallMeChris - 2013-09-25

tashippy Wrote:Oh. Was the class called Drugs and Society or the textbook or both? Either way, interesting stuff.

Both, but we used several other books as well. ('reckoning' or something like that looked at the damage drugs do vs. the damage the war on drugs does, and there were some papers.) It was interesting.

Of course, -knowing- that effects are pyschological doesn't make them any less real, so, you can't just say 'since I know this is just a psychological addiction I'll stop being addicted' or 'since I know my violent urges are just psychological conditioning I'll stop getting in bar fights and be calm when I drink'... it's all very subconscious.

As for alcohol and language learning, since alcohol inhibits memory formation it's not very conducive to language learning. On the other hand, even if it is social conditioning, it can lower inhibition enough for some people to be more confident about talking.

Hmm, the link you provide sounds a lot like it, Mcjon01. Although it's a much more detailed description and not exactly as I recall, but then, the class was long ago. That's a great link at any rate, that has a lot of solid evidence of the kind I was talking about.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - JapaneseRuleOf7 - 2013-09-25

I've lived in Japan for years, and I go out drinking quite regularly. (This will surprise exactly none of you who are familiar with my writing.) And in that time I have seen zero incidents of alcohol-related violence. Quite the contrary, I've seen drunken Japanese people confronted by drunken foreigners on several occasions, and the Japanese people didn't seem to understand why or how the other party could be upset.

As Mcjon01 pointed out in his link to Malcolm Gladwell's site, the effects of alcohol appear to be greatly culturally influenced.

Japanese people are on the whole quite passive, and alcohol does not seem to move them toward violence. Passing out in bushes and on the stairs of the station, eh, that's another matter.

lack of alcohol related violence in Japan - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-09-25

Thanks everyone for the replies everyone. I posted the link on Facebook, but the guy wasn't having it.

It seems obvious to me now, but I think the guy was just up for an argument.