A journalist in France says the mass protests and the riots were separate things.
21.8%
of agree votes for the 206 tying protest to riot
981 comments read to the bottom · every number is below
The most-agreed comment
By separating the protest from the riots, the author presumably wanted to defend the protesters. Of course I understand that the protesters and the rioters are not the same people. But what matters, I think, is the social problem France has: large numbers of "people whose only aim is looting" spring up, and fairly often.
Show original Japanese
筆者はデモと暴動を分けることでデモ参加者を擁護したかったのでしょう。
デモ参加者と暴動参加者がイコールでないことはもちろん分かります。
ただ、重要なのは大量の「略奪だけが目的の人々」が結構な頻度で湧いて出てくるフランスが抱える社会問題の方だと思います。My lady's reading
This is what my lady thought, looking at this comment section.
France, which you could almost call a nation of immigrants, has proved that its "demonstrations" include riots. So a demonstration means people who want peace smashing and looting beyond all reason, does it?
Not openly, but hoods pulled low, faces hidden, smashing and looting again and again. Is that what a demonstration is?
Honestly, I wonder whether many people really welcome Black French people. Letting it slide, it can't be helped, that's just how it is - "discrimination", people say out loud, while inside not feeling good about it. I think that's common now.
Isn't that exactly why people want it reflected in politics? A minority of the French.
That is my lady's reading.
Some of this can be counted. Did the comments see protest and riot as inseparable? How many mentioned hidden faces, or skin colour? First, though, what the story does not say.
The news
At 8:02am on 31 October 2026, Daily Shincho published a story on Yahoo! News.
On 17 October, around 550,000 people joined mass protests across France, and there was arson, vandalism and looting. The story gives the account of Yuji Hirooka, a Japanese journalist who has lived in France for more than half a century.
According to the story, Hirooka says foreign media - in Europe as well as Japan - have not understood the situation at all, and have reported it wrongly. Television showed the violent scenes of windows smashed and shops stripped more than the marches themselves. But "the protest did not turn into a riot": "the protest and the riots are completely separate phenomena". The protests began in September with high-school students demanding something be done about teacher shortages that leave classes untaught and about crumbling school buildings, spread to universities and unions, and took on rising prices too. On 17 October there were three kinds of people: "the protest's own people", "the ultra-left and the black bloc", and "people whose only aim was looting". Black bloc members dress in black clothes and caps so as not to be identified, and set fires and throw stones, but do not loot. The town hall in Limoges that burned down was destroyed by people with nothing to do with the protest. The looters gathered saying "let's go shopping", and treated looting like a game. The headline says "in Japan", but in the body the account is about foreign media in general, Europe included.
Context for readers outside Japan
Yahoo! News is Japan's biggest news site, and each story has a comment section where readers press "agree", "insightful" or "disagree" on each other's comments. Daily Shincho is the website of the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho. Many comments below read France's unrest as a warning to Japan about immigration.
What the story does not say
I read French public sources and the coverage on the day.
The figure of about 550,000 comes from the French interior ministry. ICI, the local network of the public broadcaster Radio France, says so in its live coverage of 17 October, which also carries a photograph of the Limoges town hall on fire that day.
On covering the face, there is a law. A statute of April 2019 added an offence to the French criminal code: deliberately covering all or part of the face without legitimate reason, in or right beside a demonstration on the public highway during or after which public order is disturbed, or risks being disturbed (article 431-9-1). The maximum penalty is a year's imprisonment and a 15,000-euro fine. On 4 April 2019 the Constitutional Council ruled that the provision does not breach the constitution.
On numbers, a paper from INSEE, the French statistics office, published in October 2025, puts the immigrants living in France in 2024 at 7.7 million, or 11.3% of the population. French statistics count as an immigrant anyone born a foreign national abroad and living in France, and the count continues after French nationality is acquired: a third of the 7.7 million are French citizens. Children and grandchildren born in France are not in this figure.
On skin colour and race, the Constitutional Council ruled on 15 November 2007 that even studies measuring the diversity of people's origins, discrimination and integration cannot be based on "ethnic origin or race". I found no way to check against public figures the skin colour that comments here attribute to the looters.
None of this says who did what on 17 October. (The quotations are my translations.)
83 to 17: 981 comments, 23 hours in
I read all 981 parent comments, as they stood between 6:49 and 6:50am on 1 November, about 23 hours after publication. The article showed 1,321 comments in total at 6:48am.
The buttons came to 22,971 agree, 2,298 insightful and 5,207 disagree presses. Positive presses against disagree presses: 83 to 17.
The votes lean heavily toward the top. The first comment alone holds 34.4% of the agree presses, the top 5 70.9%, the top 10 80.1%. 422 of the 981 got no agree press at all.
The 206 comments (21.0%) saying protest and riot can't be separated hold 21.8% of the agree presses. The 216 (22.0%) saying the difference is understood hold 65.3%.
21.8% to comments saying protest and riot can't be pulled apart
The 206 comments (21.0%) saying protest and riot can't be separated, that the protest set it off, or that the protest side bears some responsibility hold 21.8% of the agree presses, and 24.8% of the disagree presses.
The most-agreed of them is the third comment (2,422 agree). It says Japanese people don't think the original protesters rioted or looted either - but the protest was the trigger, and writing it off as "a protest with no problem" is odd. That one comment holds 10.5%. The fifth (994 agree) says it happened at the same time and in the same place, so it is one chain of events.
The other side drew more. The 216 comments (22.0%) saying the difference is understood, or that Japanese readers already knew it, hold 65.3% of the agree presses. The fourth comment (1,158 agree) opens by saying it is now clear the protest and the riots are different things. Counting only the 135 saying Japanese readers already knew, or that the news had said so, gives 17.1%.
To keep things separate, though: 34.4 points of that 65.3% are the first comment alone, and without it the figure is 31.0%. And many of the comments accepting the distinction did not stop there.
The top comment: the distinction is understood - the problem is French society
(This is the most-agreed comment, shown at the top of this page.)
First in the vote order: 7,896 agree, 406 insightful and 771 disagree presses - the most agree, the most insightful and the most disagree presses of any comment in the thread. It had 113 replies.
The 26 comments saying the problem is a French society that produces looters hold 36.8% of the agree presses - but only 2.5% without the first comment.
The second comment (3,820 agree) also says the protest itself was legitimate. It goes on to say that immigrants (Muslim and African) made up most of the looting and arson, that this article does not say so, and asks whether Japan is going down the same road.
169 said immigrants did it, with 22.1% of the agree presses
The 169 comments (17.2%) saying immigrants did it, or that immigration is to blame, hold 22.1% of the agree presses - one of the most-written subjects in the thread. But the second comment alone holds 16.6%; without it, the figure is 5.5%.
The 54 saying Japan will end up like this if it takes in immigrants hold 18.0%, and the 33 mentioning skin colour, race or ethnicity 17.7%. The second comment is in both; without it, 1.4% and 1.1%.
The 21 comments (2.1%) saying blaming immigrants is wrong hold 0.3% of the agree presses and 3.2% of the disagree presses.
The 39 (4.0%) writing badly of a group of people as a whole hold 0.6% of the agree presses. I have not quoted them.
16 mentioned covered faces
The 16 comments (1.6%) mentioning covered faces or black clothing hold 4.0% of the agree presses.
The most-agreed of them is the sixth (520 agree). It says ordinary young people can be seen among the looters, faces not even hidden behind masks, so some protesters seem to have joined in. Faces not covered, in other words. The ninth (368 agree) says the news reported the riots as the work of the black-clad black bloc.
That's probably about the truth of it. Given violent images, people are more interested than in a peaceful march, and the media will always report using the violent material. So: in France, gangs of immigrants are looting! Japan too, some day... and so it goes. Rioters in hoods, faces not clearly visible - watching the same video, someone said, "See, the rioters are all people of colour!" but... With the faces hidden, you can hardly tell, yet with "rioter = person of colour" drummed into your head, everyone looks like a person of colour. That's human nature.
真相はそんな所なんだろう、
過激な画像があれば平和な行進より人は興味を示す、
マスコミはどうしても過激な物を使って報道する。
それでフランスは移民集団が略奪している！
日本もいつか....となる。
フードを被って顔もハッキリ見えない暴徒を
同じ動画を見ていても「ほら暴徒は皆有色人種じゃないか！」
と言っていたが....
顔を隠しているので殆どその判別は分からない、
が頭の中に暴徒＝有色人種と刷り込まれている為
皆有色人種に見えてしまうのが人間なのだ。643rd in the vote order: 0 agree, 2 insightful and 1 disagree press. With faces hidden under hoods, it says, skin colour can't be made out.
The 358th (1 agree) says the hooded, face-hiding people smashing shops are not the protesters, who march openly.
The comment my lady shared: 567th
Say it's different all you like - everything happened at the same moment, and in the end I see it as a protest that turned into a riot. From the outside you can't tell the difference. It happens off the back of the protest, so shouting "it's different!" doesn't make it a peaceful protest. It wasn't under control. It's a fact that a great many people suffered huge trouble and losses.
違うといっても、全ての事象が同時に起きており、結果的にデモが暴徒化したと認識するよ。
違いが側から見て分からない。
デモに乗じて起きるんだから、違う！と言っても平和的デモではないよね。
コントロールできてないんだから。沢山の人達に多大な迷惑や損害が出たことは事実。567th in the vote order: 0 agree, 1 insightful and 0 disagree presses, and no replies. It sat 77th in the site's recommended order.
It is one of the 206 saying protest and riot can't be separated - 21.8% of the agree presses between them.
Checking my lady's reading
My lady said France had proved that its "demonstrations" include riots.
This thread says the opposite. The 206 comments saying protest and riot can't be separated hold 21.8% of the agree presses; the 216 saying the difference is understood hold 65.3%. The comment my lady shared - you can't tell the difference from the outside - got a single insightful press.
To keep things separate, though: the first comment, which accepts the distinction, goes on to say that what matters is the social problem of a France where looters turn up in large numbers. The second, after calling the protest legitimate, says the looters were immigrants. The comments nodded at separating protest from riot, and then moved on to who did the looting.
My lady also called France almost a nation of immigrants. In French statistics, immigrants are 11.3% of the population. In this thread, the 169 comments saying immigrants did it hold 22.1% of the agree presses, 16.6 points of that from the second comment.
My lady spoke of hoods pulled low to hide faces. In France, deliberately covering the face at a demonstration where public order is disturbed is an offence in itself. In this thread, the 16 comments mentioning covered faces hold 4.0% of the agree presses, and the most-agreed of them, the sixth, says ordinary young people could be seen with faces uncovered.
My lady wondered whether many people really welcome Black French people. What French people feel inside cannot be counted from this thread. What I could count is the comments mentioning discrimination in France: 9, with 1.1% of the agree presses. The 22nd (89 agree) says the deep frustration of being disadvantaged in finding work by skin colour or name, even when born in France, leads to riots. The 33 comments mentioning skin colour, race or ethnicity hold 17.7%, but nearly all of that is the second comment - which says the looters were African and other immigrants, not how French people receive anyone.
My lady said that is exactly why people want it reflected in politics. The 43 comments mentioning French politics or parties hold 4.0% of the agree presses.
What I have not checked
This thread is as it stood about 23 hours after publication; later comments are not in these counts. The site showed 986 parent comments when I read it, and 5 did not come through.
I have not checked who looted on 17 October. Many comments say immigrants, Africans or Muslims did, but the story does not say so, and, as above, I found no way to check it against public figures. Nor have I been able to establish how many people were arrested, or who was arrested.
The story has a second part, which I could not read. Some comments here mention reading it; I have not checked what it says.
I read article 431-9-1 as it appears in the Constitutional Council's 2019 decision. Whether it has been amended since, I could not check, as the French legislation website would not open.
Some comments say which party leads the polls for next year's French presidential election. I have not checked.
Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one, so treat the counts as approximate.
The 39 comments writing badly of a group of people as a whole are in the counts, but I have not quoted them.
Yuji Hirooka is named in the story, so the name is given here as published.
Closing
My lady said France's "demonstrations" include riots.
In this thread, the comments saying protest and riot can't be pulled apart hold 21.8% of the agree presses. Those accepting the distinction hold 65.3% - though many of them, once the line was drawn, moved on to French society, or to immigrants. The comment my lady shared got one insightful press.
That is as far as the counting goes.
The top five comments by vote
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1st 7896 ∕ 771 By separating the protest from the riots, the author presumably wanted to defend the protesters. Of course the protesters and the rioters are not the same people. But what matters is France's social problem: large numbers of 'people whose only aim is looting' keep appearing, and fairly often
- 2nd 3820 ∕ 408 This article, too, avoids saying that immigrants (Muslim and African) make up most of the looting and arson. The protest was legitimate; unions joined, then the left rioted in the confusion, then immigrants looted. The result of taking in immigrants on rosy assumptions, and past the point of return. Is Japan going down the same road?
- 3rd 2422 ∕ 380 Japanese people don't think the original protesters rioted or looted either. But it is a fact that people bent on violence and looting gathered by using the protest, and the protest was the trigger. Writing it off as 'a protest with no problem' is odd. Shouldn't the conditions for protests be fixed?
- 4th 1158 ∕ 118 Understood: the protest and the riots are different things. But surely it is also a country where riots riding on protests, or on big sporting events, happen often. Japan has its share of opportunist trouble too, but there's far less reason to fear for your safety
- 5th 994 ∕ 316 I follow news from all over the world, and the reports were right. Rioting and looting happened at the same time and in the same place as the protest, so it's one chain of events. To stop the city being wrecked, the protest side should rethink its methods
Every number from this thread
I read all 981 parent comments, as they stood between 6:49 and 6:50am on 1 November 2026, about 23 hours after publication. The site showed 986 parent comments at the time; 5 did not come through. The article showed 1,321 comments in total at 6:48am, and the parent comments had 329 replies. The buttons came to 22,971 agree, 2,298 insightful and 5,207 disagree - 83 to 17. Agree against disagree alone is 4.4 to 1. The votes lean heavily toward the top: the first comment alone holds 34.4% of the agree presses, the top 3 61.5%, the top 5 70.9%, the top 10 80.1% and the top 20 88.6%. The first comment also has the most disagree presses in the thread, 771. 422 of the 981 got no agree press at all, 147 got no press of any kind, and the 136 where disagree outnumbered agree hold 34.9% of all disagree presses. The average comment is 112.9 characters long, and the 207 under 40 characters hold 0.8% of the agree presses. Of the 329 replies, 155 are on the top two comments, and 936 of the 981 have no reply at all. I counted what the comments said. The 206 (21.0%) saying protest and riot can't be separated, that the protest set it off, or that the protest side bears some responsibility hold 21.8% of the agree presses - 10.5% of that from the third comment alone. The 216 (22.0%) saying the difference is understood, or that Japanese readers already knew it, hold 65.3%; without the first comment, 31.0%. Counting only those saying Japanese readers already knew, or that the news had said so, gives 135 comments and 17.1%. The 62 saying the damage is real either way hold 0.7%. The 26 saying the problem is a French society that produces looters hold 36.8% - but 2.5% without the first comment. The 169 (17.2%) saying immigrants did it, or that immigration is to blame, hold 22.1%; the second comment alone holds 16.6%, and without it the figure is 5.5%. The 54 saying Japan will end up like this if it takes in immigrants hold 18.0%, and the 33 mentioning skin colour, race or ethnicity 17.7% - without the second comment, 1.4% and 1.1%. The 21 (2.1%) saying blaming immigrants is wrong hold 0.3% of the agree presses and 3.2% of the disagree presses. The 16 mentioning covered faces or black clothing hold 4.0%, the 9 mentioning discrimination in France 1.1%, and the 43 mentioning French politics or parties 4.0%. As many as 200 (20.4%) wrote about Japanese news coverage, but they hold 5.7% of the agree presses and 24.4% of the disagree presses. The 170 (17.3%) disputing the article or its author hold 70.1% (35.7% without the first comment), and the 35 agreeing with or praising it 7.8%. Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one, so treat the counts as approximate. The 39 (4.0%) writing badly of a group of people as a whole hold 0.6% of the agree presses. I have not quoted them. The comment my lady shared is 567th in the vote order, with a single insightful press.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.
