Crime Worries Tourists From Japan : Travel: Street violence is shown on television there. Fear about personal safety is considered a main reason the number of trips to L.A. has dropped.

While his friends pored over a map of Dodger Stadium, the highlight of their one-day visit to the city, Tokyo resident Naoyuki Shizu admitted, “I was afraid to visit Los Angeles.”

Los Angeles crime is often news on Japanese television, said the 24-year-old Japanese tourist, who was in Little Tokyo on Tuesday as part of an 18-day tour of the United States.

Gang-related violence, drive-by shootings and the recent videotaped beating of Altadena motorist Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers have been so widely aired in Japan that Mayor Tom Bradley felt compelled to defend Los Angeles as a “safe city” at a news conference Tuesday in Tokyo.

Compared to Tokyo, which has a population of 8.3 million, Los Angeles, with its 3.5 million residents, has a much higher crime rate. In 1989, there were 121 homicides in Tokyo, compared to 877 in Los Angeles, according to the National Police Agency in Washington. There were 218 rapes reported in Tokyo that year, compared to 1,993 in Los Angeles, and 223 robberies reported in Tokyo compared to 30,705 in Los Angeles.

“Crime has always been a bit of a concern with the Asian market,” said Gary Sherwin, spokesman for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The fear of personal safety is probably the No. 1 detriment to a Japanese visitor when considering a visit to Los Angeles.”

Tour operators and hotel and consular officials in Los Angeles said that while Japanese tourists are concerned about crime in the United States--not just Los Angeles--the recent Persian Gulf conflict has had a far greater impact on the declining numbers traveling to Los Angeles in recent months.

“The war killed that market anywhere between 70% to 90% depending on who you talked to,” Sherwin said. “Immediately at the outbreak in January, it was like hitting a light switch. Cancellations just flooded the city.”

“Tourism in general, not only to the United States and Los Angeles, has shrunk dramatically for security reasons,” said Japanese Consul Naoharu Fujii in Los Angeles.

Kay Tajima of the Japan Travel Bureau, the largest local tour operator for Japanese tourists, described the tourist drop from the Gulf War as “a periodic thing.”

“The more important lasting thing among Japanese people is the image of America as unsafe,” Tajima said.

Statistics for 1989 show that 830,000 tourists from Asia visited Los Angeles, with Japanese visitors making up more than half that number, Tajima said.

Convention and tourism officials as well as Bradley are addressing the crime issue now, Sherwin said, because the number of tourists from Japan is not growing as much as in recent years.

At the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo, Takashi Nagai, senior sales manager, said business-related “study” tours, based around visits to factories or commercial facilities, did not seem affected by concerns about crime. “They need to see certain places. But if you’re talking about pleasure sightseeing tours, Los Angeles’ image as having a high percentage of crime affects visitors.”

Takeshi Ogawa, assistant manager in the Los Angeles office of Jalpak, another large tour operator, said he believes that the crime issue has encouraged travelers to pick other destinations.

“Suppose somebody wanted to make a honeymoon trip,” Ogawa said. “Compared to Australia, I think you could say Australia is safer than the United States, or maybe Europe. Here in the United States, the possibilities are quite bigger of being injured due to crime.”

“There are so many pickpockets, and so many problems here,” said Ted Fukase, a local tour guide for the Japan Travel Bureau. “In San Francisco, for example, you can go out at night, walk to the theater or restaurants. Here you can’t at nighttime.”

Tour escorts routinely brief Japanese tourists on diverse issues such as keeping an eye on luggage, using safety deposit boxes for valuables, and where not to walk downtown, Nagai said. “In Tokyo or Japan, they can go anywhere, even young ladies and it is safe. The escorts try to tell them this is a different place.”

BIG CITY CRIME

Here are some crime-related statistics reported in Tokyo and the City of Los Angeles in 1989:

LOS ANGELES TOKYO (population (population 3.5 million) 8.3 million) * Homicide 877 121 * Rape 1,993 218 * Robbery 30,705 223 * Sworn Police Officers 8,417 41,381*

*1987 figure

NOTE: Tokyo’s population includes the 23 surrounding metropolitan areas.

Compiled by Times editorial researcher Cecilia Rasmussen

SOURCE: Japanese Consulate, National Police Agency of Japan representative, LAPD.