Security measures to prevent break-ins through the window are on the top of shelves lined with security goods, according to a sign at a Super Viva Home store in Shin-Toshin, Saitama Prefecture, on February 1. Yosuke Watanabe SAITAMA - A recent string of violent burglaries across Japan has sparked a rush to beef up home security, with some stores seeing security products flying off the shelves.
On February 1, customers flocked to a section of the Super Viva Home Saitama Shin-Toshin home center store lined with security products.
I am scared of robberies, said a woman in her 50s who was in Saitama Prefecture who was at the store. I came here to buy film sheets to keep my windows from breaking. She went to the store after seeing news of the burglaries.
Residents were attacked while they were at home, a common factor in the recent highly publicized robberies. Some cases resulted in deaths of the victims.
Special film sheets that make it difficult to break windows are selling particularly well, according to Arclands Co. based in Niigata Prefecture, which operates the Super Viva Home chain.
An employee at Arclands said that they had never seen such a surge in sales of security products in the past decade.
The company said that at just a few hundred yen, sales of the film sheets in the 10 days to Jan. 31 totaled more than 10 times in the same period last year.
Sales of auxiliary locks have increased fivefold, as they prevent a window from opening even if it is broken and unlocked.
The sales of security cameras and outdoor sensor lights increased 1.5 times.
According to the company, products that run on dry-cell batteries or solar power and require no installation work are selling well.
The Arclands staff member said that people are aware of the security because of the violent burglaries raising public interest in such products.
Security product sales increased as a result of Cainz, a major home center in Saitama Prefecture.
Sales of alarms, particularly alarms that go off in response to a break-in through a window and portable personal safety alarms, rose about six times higher in the week through January 29 compared to the same period last year.
The number of inquiries from Jan. 20 to 31 about home security systems has increased by more than five times, according to Secom Co., a major security service provider in Tokyo.