Japan is famous for its spotless streets. So why are public rubbish bins so hard to find?

From a deadly 1995 attack to deeply ingrained social norms, the story of Japan's scarce rubbish bins is more complicated than it first appears.

Spend a day sightseeing in Tokyo and you may find yourself carrying an empty coffee cup, your 7-11 egg sando wrapper and a growing sense of confusion. Japan is renowned for prizing cleanliness – so why is there nowhere to throw anything away?

It's a frustration familiar to visitors, and one that has spawned countless social media videos of bewildered tourists hunting the spotless streets for a rubbish bin. 

But the answer is more complicated than it first appears.  

"It is a complex mix of historical developments… economic phenomena, political events and their variegated effects on how people decide to act," says Eiko Maruko Siniawer, history professor at Williams College and author of Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. 

Japan wasn't always a bin-less nation. Siniawer points to March 1995 as a major turning point in the nation's bin culture – when members of the Aum Shinrikyō cult released sarin gas on three Tokyo Metro lines during the morning rush hour, killing 14 and injuring thousands. In the aftermath, authorities sealed or removed rubbish bins as a terrorism-prevention measure.

Subsequent terrorist attacks around the world, including 9/11 in the US, helped ensure those measures stuck. But three decades later, security alone doesn't explain why so few bins have returned – or why Japan remains so remarkably litter-free.

Cost and practicality are part of the answer. Since the 2000s, some municipalities have deliberately reduced street bins, says Aya Yoshida of Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies, to encourage people to take their rubbish home.

"In Kyoto, for example, the number of street bins was cut by more than half […] from 2011, after problems such as household waste being deposited in them and litter accumulating around them increased the costs of maintaining and managing those bins," Yoshida adds.

So why isn't there more litter on the streets? Yoshida cautions against attributing Japan's cleanliness to some uniquely Japanese sense of tidiness.........

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