Japanese society is changing

My last entry got me to thinking about the Japanese reputation for honesty.
This country is by far the safest I have ever experienced, but the times they are a-changing.
I can still, being the idiot I am, leave the house all day, with my French windows fully open, and come home to find the place intact. But in smaller ways, dishonesty is creeping into the social life of the Japanese.
On the platform of my local train station, a new sign has been posted. It asks people kindly not to jump the fence, but leave the station through the ticket gates at the station building.
Now in Ireland this wouldn't cause me to raise an eyebrow - there people evade fares all the time. But this is just not done in Japan - usually people are meticulous about getting the exact fare right.
I also don't think it's simple enough to say that it must be foreigners: The sign was only in Japanese - not English or Spanish.
Nor can you simply dismiss it and say Japan is going to the dogs.
What I actually think is happening is that people are getting lazy.
Most people in my town commute. It's a real sleeper suburb. So usually passengers have a flat-fee, monthly commuter pass.
This means that in jumping the fence they're not actually trying to diddle the company out of a fare, they just don't want to walk all the way back to the station building if their home is a quick hop away.
The worrying thing for me is that this attitude, if true, would represent a major psychological shift. Older Japanese wouldn't dream of putting their personal comfort over respect for the train c ompany, the owner of the parking lot they'd be tramping through illegally or the younger people to whom they'd be setting a bad example.
It just makes me wonder if these small, insidious shifts represent the start of a downward slide to break-ins, vandalism and muggings on a daily basis. I sure hope not.