Competition

There's a big difference between Graffiti in Japan and the rest of the world. All over the world Graffiti artists have to compete with local gangs for spaces that they tag. Gangs mark their territory over artists tags and other gangs mark over that.

Japan doesn't seem to have this problem. While gangs do exist in Japan, they aren't as violent or controlling as the other street gangs around the world. A powerful local Yakuza controls the territories and seem relatively unconcerned with tagging. This leaves the area wide open to Grafitti artists where all they need to watch out for is the police and the worst thing that can happen to their work is for it to be white-washed by the locals. Even white-washing itself isn't a bad thing as it once again creates a blank page for another artists work.

Insead of competition between taggers, there is a respect and mutual cooperation in most cases. No rival crews will tag over anothers work. Often they will try to do a piece next to or near their rivals work that is better or bigger. Because of this, the graffiti in Japan on a whole is more artistic. That's not to say that there isn't a lot of artistic graffiti elsewhere in world but that in those places, it tends to be mixed in with gang work or covered by the competition making it look shoddy or poorly planned out.

The biggest challenges that face graffiti artists in Japan are not other artists but placing large, intricate, graffiti in hard to reach, high profile places.