International Journal of Arts and Humanities

Foreignness, Ageing, and Road-Safety Discourse: An Exploratory Comparative Analysis of Japanese Media Framing of Foreign and Elderly Drivers

Abstract

This paper compares Japanese media treatment of the May 2025 Shin-Meishin Expressway wrong-way-driving incident involving a Peruvian man with four 2025 accidents involving drivers aged 81–91. It examines incident severity, investigative visibility, publicly reported legal consequences, and framing. The foreign-driver case generated a long narrative arc—arrest, indictment, courtroom reporting, prosecutorial sentencing request, and debate over foreign-license conversion. In contrast, the elderly-driver reports generally emphasized the crash, the driver’s age, and broader prevention or mobility concerns; most did not provide a publicly traceable final legal disposition. The comparison therefore suggests an asymmetry in follow-up and scale: nationality was repeatedly linked to individual culpability and punishment, while old age was more often linked to population-level risk management. Because the sample is small and assembled from search-visible reports, these findings describe selected coverage rather than Japanese media as a whole.

Keywords: Japan; elderly drivers; foreign drivers; traffic accidents; media framing; criminal justice.