After 16 years of studying shoplifting in Japan and testing ways to curb the problem, academic Tomoo Okubo believes he has found the simplest and most effective deterrent: a friendly greeting from a member of staff.Shoplifting has grown steadily worse in Japan in recent years – a trend accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to Okubo, a professor of criminal psychology at Kagawa University. He says official case numbers reflect only a fraction of the real total.“The prefecture where...