From the photo, I would bet it's a projection onto a person-shaped glass or plastic standee, maybe with some texturing and projection mapping to add a "3D" effect.

There's a video; It's literally just a projector pointed at a flat human shaped board

I don't live in Japan, but I don't remember being in a train where there wouldn't be at least two people from the staff in uniforms. Could you explain what you have in mind? Are there trains without drivers or without people checking tickets?

A scarecrow for humans.

Or was it because it attracted more people to the area, making criminals less likely to hang around?

From a South Korean news article (translated using llm):

> The police installed human-sized holograms in this park last October. The videos played daily from 7 PM to 10 PM. Analyzing crime occurrences for eight months until May of this year, it was found that the number of major crimes (murder, robbery, rape, theft, violence) within the park's radius decreased by about 22% compared to the same period before the installation (October 2023 to May 2024). This park was a place with frequent reports due to drinking, alcohol-related violence, and disturbances.

Numbeo is entirely based on self-reports by the kinds of people who use Numbeo. For price comparisons you can at least argue that although the prices listed are much too high, it's a realistic representation of how much you're likely to pay if you're a naive Westerner who interacts with locals mainly in English and isn't particularly price-sensitive. But the crime index is entirely based on how worried people are about crime. Considering that most people won't personally become victims of a crime in a given year even in relatively high-crime areas, the crime index tells you more about the people doing the self-reporting than about the level of crime.

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Yes. Yes! Like Amelie with the photo booth guy. She has to find the officer in the hologram. But there is a twist! Maybe he's in a wheelchair now, pushing papers behind a desk. Or he's been disfigured beyond recognition in a horrible arson or acid attack. She still loves him though.

Same for fridges at workplaces - stick a picture of some eyes on the fridge...theft goes down.