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

So why isn’t there more litter on the streets? Yoshida cautions against attributing Japan’s cleanliness to some uniquely Japanese sense of tidiness. Clean streets, she stresses, are also the result of years of deliberate policy. “For decades, municipalities have invested in anti-littering campaigns, public education, street cleaning and environmental design measures intended to discourage littering,” she says.