The odds of accidents and crime

Traffic accidents and crime happen regardless of your choices. Each year in the game, you may be caught up in a traffic accident, bicycle theft, burglary, violence or fraud, with probabilities that match that year's statistics. In your teens, you may also be arrested or taken into police guidance for delinquency.

Getting injured in a traffic accident

According to National Police Agency statistics, 338,508 people were injured and 2,547 killed in traffic accidents in 2025. In the game, the number injured each year from 1948 to 2025, divided by the population, is the chance of being injured that year.

As a result, the share of people injured in a traffic accident at least once in their lives ranges from about 23% to 38% depending on generation. It is higher for generations who were young or in their working prime around 1970, when car ownership spread rapidly, and in the early 2000s. Traffic deaths are already included in the life tables used to calculate lifespan, so they are not added here.

Becoming a crime victim

According to the National Police Agency's Crime Situation in 2025, there were 774,142 reported Penal Code offenses in 2025, or 6.3 per 1,000 people. At the 2002 peak the rate was 22.4, more than three times today's level. In the game, the 2025 count for each type of crime is divided by the population and scaled up or down to match the overall level of Penal Code offenses in each year.

Dividing total fraud losses in 2025 (about ¥402.9 billion) by the number of reported cases gives an average of about ¥5.55 million per case. Losses per case have grown with the spread of "special fraud" phone scams and social media investment and romance scams. In the game, losses are drawn from a wide distribution with a median of ¥1 million (assumption), set so that the average comes to about ¥5.55 million.

Teenage delinquency

The Ministry of Justice's White Paper on Crime 2017 lists, for each birth cohort, the share of people arrested or taken into guidance for Penal Code offenses at each age from 12 to 19 (the juvenile delinquency rate). For example, for those born in 1974–79 it peaked at 1,972.6 per 100,000 at age 15, falling to 1,657.0 for those born in 1992–97. The game uses this value as the chance of being arrested or taken into guidance at that age, and splits it between boys and girls using the female share. Most cases are theft, such as shoplifting.

Because the data don't distinguish people arrested more than once, the share of people "arrested at least once in their lives" comes out higher than in reality (12–20% of men and 1–5% of women in the game).

What isn't covered yet

Statistics also exist on sexual crimes, child abuse, domestic violence (DV) and stalking, but they are not in the game at this point.

Character, bad influences, loan guarantees, and starting over

Your "character" is set at birth (from your social skills and values). It goes up with acts like volunteering or turning down bad invitations, and down with acts like committing crimes, cheating on a partner or hanging out with a bad crowd. The higher it is, the more luck you have, like a former junior colleague introducing you to work or someone helping you in a pinch; the lower it is, the more bad luck, like someone running off with your money or losing people's trust.

The harsher your circumstances (a struggling family, dropping out of high school, ties to a bad crowd or a gang, time in prison and so on), the closer you are to bad influences in your teens (biker gangs, delinquent upperclassmen or people met on social media, depending on the era), and, as an adult, to pyramid schemes and gambling debts. A relative or close friend may ask you to be a joint guarantor on a loan; if you agree, you take on the debt when their business fails (since the 2020 revision of the Civil Code, a personal guarantee for a business loan requires confirmation of intent by a notary). After prison, personal bankruptcy, leaving a gang or going on public assistance, you can choose a path to start over, such as leaving your hometown, connecting with support services or a self-help group, or getting job training. How character is set, how likely these strokes of luck are, and the rates of bad influences and guarantees are assumptions.

Related: How long you live / Where, and into what family, you are born

Next: How long you live