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Every day is a beginning.
Been in Japan 10 years never even seen or heard a gun outside of the internet/movies/tv. Can't have anything to do with their laws though. >

Because the laws you're talking about are several hundreds of years old. They basically prohibited peasants from owning weapons in order to prevent uprisings. Those laws were revised and rewritten dozens of times and then again post-WWII after Japan became occupied by the US in order to make sure Japan couldn't rise up against the occupying forces.  
You don't see firearms because the rate of firearm ownership, or any weapon ownership, was extremely limited from the beginning.