The number of visiting foreign nationals cleared for general penal code offenses had been under 2,000 until 1987, but it exceeded 3,000 in 1988. Since then, while repeating increase and decrease, the number has been on the rise for a long-term basis and it increased by 839 from the previous year to 7,168 in 2001, which indicates amore than 7-fold increase over the past twenty years.
   Fig. 5-2-4-3 shows the rate of visiting foreign nationals to the number of persons cleared for homicide and the 9 types of violent offenses. The rate of visiting foreign nationals had been under 1 % until 1985 for all of these focused types of offenses, but it has continuously increased since then. The rate for robbery reached about 7% in 1993. More specifically, the rate for robbery increased from 0.6% (11 foreign nationals) in 1985 to 7.5% (309 foreign nationals) in 2001.
  Following robbery, there has also been a significant rise in the rate of increase of the number of visiting foreign nationals cleared for breaking and entering: the number of visiting foreign nationals cleared increased from less than 10 until 1985 to 99 in 2001. Recently, despite the small share of offenses committed by visiting foreign nationals in the total number of penal code offenses, these offenses by visiting foreign nationals have a considerable impact on the crime situation in Japan, such as their method of entering houses with the use of special lock-picking tools being imitated by Japanese offenders.
  The number of overstayers, who make up the vast majority of the visiting foreign nationals who commit offenses, decreased after reaching a peak of about 299,000 in 1993, but it is still over 220,000 and therefore attention should be paid to its trend in the future. The number of group stowaway incidents decreased after peaking in 1997, but in 2001, the number of incidents increased by 22 (104.8%) from the previous year to 43 and the number of persons cleared for these incidents increased by 316 (306.8%) from the previous year, to 419 (Source: International Affairs Department, Director-General's Secretariat, National Police Agency and Immigration Bureau, Ministry of Justice: See Part 1, Chapter 2, Section 2 ).

Fig. 5-2-4-3 Trends in the rate of visiting foreign nationals to the number of persons cleared, by type of offense (1980-2001)