This is a common response, but I reject it. The over-protection in the U.S. goes way beyond actually protecting kids from violent crime. It's rooted in some kind of pathological paranoia. Even with its low crime rate, I think it could hit Japan in exactly the same way.
If Japanese kids have a one in a billion chance of being hit by a meteorite, and US kids have a ten times higher rate, does that mean the US is justified in requiring kids to wear meteorite resistant helmets at all times?
There's a lot of discussion in the Wikipedia article saying that you can't compare rates internationally. Please be a bit more careful with statistics.
In England police recorded numbers for crime are not seen as statistically sound.
> In January 2014 the UK Statistics Authority published an assessment of ONS crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, were found not to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.
We can't compare the numbers between Japan and the US because we don't know what definition of rape is being used in each country (and for the US that definition is different for every state).
We don't know if there are cultural things that change how many people report a rape to police. We don't know if police record every report.