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Answerman - How Often Do Japanese Teenagers Live Alone?

As someone that lives in the county of Islands that is Åland (Finland) that only have 1 High School and 1 University and the commute to school is 30 minutes-2 hours depending on which sub county you live in, I can totally relate to live alone in the city and wonder why people complain so much about it, besides benig an convenient reason to not write parents into the story.

American/Western individualism is a big part of the reason for the differences in trust and safety. There's such low crime in Japan because everyone puts the group and the community above themselves.

Now, I personally believe that there can be a compromise - that intelligent people can make conscious effort to value the individual in some areas, and the group in others, and have the benefits of both types of society and the drawbacks of neither, but that hasn't happened yet. But I think it's possible.

Also, some teenagers live alone - more than America - let's say, 20%? That's still not everyone. For the percentage of anime that focus on this specific type of protagonist, there's the same thing at play as the whole "Why are all the YA books about orphans?" issue. Good parents get in the way of teens having adventures. They either need to be absent/dead, or the bad guys, to give the kids freedom to be main characters.

.......... also, yes, elementary school kids do walk around by themselves. Elementary school boys in their uniforms look like Hotarumaru, or the younger Toushirou swords, in Touken Ranbu, and it's cute, until you realize they're dressing 7-year-olds up like soldiers...

to add on that, elementary schoolers take the subway (by themselves) for distances that most highschoolers in other countries would be afraid to do.

John Thacker wrote:

In reality, the United States is easily safe enough for similar practices as Japan (maybe not as young as two), considering that the US crime rate is far, far lower than it was from 1960 through the 1990s, time periods when children and teenagers moved unaccompanied far more than now, including on trains and airplanes. It doesn't have much to do with the crime rate, rather it has quite a bit more to do with what is seen as socially acceptable, and as part of that, what will get you arrested or informed upon to CPS.

This is definitely true. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid, children routinely went all sorts of places without adult supervision. I'm often bemused to watch school kids at bus stops with their parents there. That was never the case when I was going to school... even back in kindergarten, when I was around 5, my Mom didn't escort me to or from the bus stop. Let alone by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade. Heck, if I missed the bus, I had to walk the two miles home from school.

Parents these days are *far* more (over-)protective of their kids. From Soccer Moms to Helicopter Moms, parents seem to want to know what their children are doing at all times, and to keep them busy doing something all the time. This is the *opposite* of freedom and individuality that an earlier posted commented on, and IMO is a bad thing because it limits the maturation process of kids.

you can't turn on the news today without hearing about someone getting shot, kidnapped, molested, or killed in a fire every single freaking day.

Um....*laughs ruefully*

I think you guys are insane....you can't turn on the news today without hearing about someone getting shot, kidnapped, molested, or killed in a fire every single freaking day.

*If you're worried about your kids, the stats show you'd be far, far, better off locking them away from their siblings, parents, relatives, teachers, pastors, coaches, etc... than from strangers. (And we're talking orders of magnitude here, not minor differences.)

DerekL1963 wrote:

*If you're worried about your kids, the stats show you'd be far, far, better off locking them away from their siblings, parents, relatives, teachers, pastors, coaches, etc... than from strangers. (And we're talking orders of magnitude here, not minor differences.)

The simple truth is that most often than not it is people we know are the one committing aggressions, it is because we lower our defences because their are not strangers. If we lowered out defences to strangers just the same you can be sure many non good people will use the opportunity to do criminal acts.