Tom W., my brother-in-law was stationed in Japan for a while, and he noticed a lot of Japanese racism too.
I would like to point out that, before and during WWII, Japan had a great deal of censorship, yes, including manga and western style comics.
It didn’t do much to rein in the violence they perpetrated on the Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. So, yeah, I’d have to say “coincidence”. Whatever the reason for the current rise in Japan’s crime rate, I don’t think censorship is the answer. The jump is crime is surely caused by a number of problems.
Given its history: the samurai warrior cast, the war with Russia, WWII, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Japanese culture is not pacifist, and that it does harbor violence within it. This doesn’t mean it’s evil. It does mean that, like every other culture, Japan has problems (and the human potential for violence and crime) that it needs to deal with realistically.
