In my 4th floor apartment in Tokyo there was a box containing what seemed to be basically an abseiling harness. Instructions in Japanese but seemed like if shit hits the fan you smash the window, clip it to the building and get yourself down to street level asap.

Our AirBnB in Tokyo last year had a box mounted on the balcony which (according to the instructions on the outside) held some crane-like thing with a harness to let you swing out over the balcony and rappel down in the case of emergency.

My parents had something very similar to this in their apartment in the midwestern US in the 80s. I recall it as being an aluminum mount with a chain ladder.