Getting arrested in Japan
sundaicity.com
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If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different than if he had a loud but normal argument you might see in any big box store in the US.
That he doesn't go on to protest why he got locked up makes me think it was something more serious.
Some time ago (can't easily find it anymore) there was a expose on UK prisons, which was interesting without even knowing what crime the prisoner was convicted of, but turns out it was abuse of a relative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
It also makes the act of accusing incredibly powerful, and you have to wonder what threshold there is and whose accusations matter, because this severe punishment for dropped charges feels extremely powerful.
If they confess, it counts as a win. If they don’t, you release them but it’s not a loss (as they were not charged).
In Japan you can be arrested while an investigation is in process, only afterwards you will be indicted. Additionally, Japan does not permit defendants to post bail prior to an indictment.
Yes Japan has a really high conviction rate, but that is because they indict only cases were a conviction is likely.
Arrests don't need to lead to the person being indicted.
By comparison, you might consider https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/14/fewer-tha... :
> In fiscal year 2022, only 290 of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases – about 0.4% – went to trial and were acquitted
So does the US.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/11/only-2-of...
But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
I’m not familiar with this term. Is that an old thing?
Nah, it's a principle that was brought in from English common law. E.g Blackstone's Ratio[0] was published at roughly the same time as the American revolution was playing out, and cited plenty of earlier formulations of the same principle. Habeas Corpus was codified in the Magna Carta, but predated it as a concept.
You're right than I'm oversimplifying it, and being very US centric.
In the US, just as in Japan, as soon as you are arrested they begin punishing you. If there were a real assumption of innocence, jail would be pleasant and comfortable, and if you were WFH you wouldn't miss a day. There is a material presumption of guilt, even if there's some sort of ethereal theoretical presumption of innocence.
Instead, you're in a horrible cell, eating horrible food, dressed in a humiliating way, treated in a humiliating way, and exposed to dangerous people. Unless you can pay a bond which you will never get back (because you are too poor to pay bail.) You haven't been convicted of anything. The fine you're facing might be lower than your bond, and the time you're facing might be shorter than the time you'd have to wait in jail to go to court.
At some point, you have to hold the person and figure out if they're a danger or not. Not everything is an unpaid ticket, and jail is probably unpleasant because everyone involved is unpleasant. Has it ever been otherwise?
>pay a bond which you will never get back (because you are too poor to pay bail.)
Why would you not get your bond back if you went to court as required? It would be forfeit if someone stops showing up to hearings, which is a requirement of their bond. It's to get them to return to court instead of just fleeing.
The bondsman guarantees your appearance, but often charges tons of interest or other fees that cost you that $5k, plus whatever collateral you can muster.
Apparently a handful of states bypass the bondsman approach by allowing defendants to post the 10% of the bond in cash to the court itself, and then refunding it minus small fees if the defendant makes their appearances.
Overall, I see where defendants come from but the courts want appearances, and failures to appear aren't rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_to_appear
(don't go to court if you can avoid it)
That's a rather rose-tinted view of criminal justice here... I do hear that sentiment a lot here, but it's just words, and as you sort of hint at, the reality doesn't match the words.
> But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
That's a big philosophical question. I argue that no, that's not ok, and I'd rather guilty people go free (and possibly hurt others) than put an innocent person behind bars.
My wife was traveling in Central America last year, and befriended another traveler from a nearby country. This woman told my wife that her country used to be fairly dangerous (both for locals and tourists) due to the proliferation of criminal gangs, but that the current president had mobilized the police/military and aggressively cleaned things up. She mentioned that a large number of innocent people got caught in the crossfire and and were now rotting in jail, but if that was the price of safety for everyone else, she was ok with it.
I had a very visceral negative reaction to this story, and found it disappointing that someone would hold that opinion. But I suppose it's a lot easier to take that stance when it's not you or someone you care about being falsely accused and sent to prison.
So I think that's another way to look at your question: would you be ok going to prison as an innocent person, as a known, understood, and societally-accepted side-effect of a safer society? If the answer is no, then you can't expect anyone else to do it. And even if the answer is yes, that's still a personal decision/opinion, and still can't expect anyone else to do it.
(For the record: hell no, I would not be ok with that.)
I have to imagine that from her point of view, it's a lot easier to take the stance that you'd rather see guilty people go free than put an innocent person behind bars when it's not your neighborhood with the dangerous criminal gangs....
Yes, more so than if it was someone else.
"I spent a total of 35 days here. The first arrest was 3 days of processing, the initial 10 days followed by the 10 days extension for a total of 23 days before my case was dropped. But the same time my case was dropped my accusers found a another reason to issue a second arrest keeping me there for an additional 12 days!
Both cases were ultimately dropped and the second arrest was essentially tied to the first and shouldn’t have even been possible."
>Both cases were ultimately dropped and the second arrest was essentially tied to the first and shouldn’t have even been possible. But because of how the system works weather it’s a viable reason or not, they can still trap you in there for a time while the case is being reviewed. I met others who where there for shorter and much longer periods of time. The worst part was knowing i was innocent. After it’s all said and done you walk out and they act as if nothing happened. Not only was this was all extremely traumatizing but it cost me a HUGE of money that I really did not have and caused irreversible damage to my life.
The literal majority of people in US jails are there not because they have been convicted of anything but because they were given a bail amount they couldn’t afford to pay, which is a deliberate strategy by the courts when there is no justification to refuse bail. This can look like a $500 cash bail set on a homeless guy charged with resisting arrest (aka being arrested). Many of them are innocent and are trapped and have their lives ruined in exactly the way this guy describes. (We assume that many of them are innocent because when someone pays their bail, more than 50% of cases are simply dismissed as soon as they leave jail. The expectation is that they will just plead guilty because otherwise they are stuck in jail for months waiting for a trial).
This sounds like a very dubious assumption.
Even for smaller examples it happens all the time. Half the time you can completely get out of traffic tickets by showing up to court to plead not guilty. They dismiss the case because it's not worth the time.
I don't know what this means in the context of the US justice system. They're not paid on commission. They're being paid to be there no matter what happens.
They dismiss the case because the cop didn't bother to show up, or they didn't have any evidence against your defense. The reason you (as the person who got ticketed) don't show up to court is because you know you have nothing to say, or because it's not worth it to you when getting out of the ticket isn't enough pay for 3-4 hours of your time. The only reason you do show up is because you think you have a defense.
If you can't make bail, you're showing up no matter how stupid the charge is.
edit: I have personal experience (from a few decades ago) of being forced to face stupid charges. It was a game. They inflated the potential sentence to 3-5 years through silly charges designed for just that, and offered me a plea bargain of no time, no fine, and expungement from my record in 6 months. I pled guilty. If I hadn't been bailed out, I would have had to wait two weeks in jail for that moronic, depressing event. I pled guilty because it was easy to do, even if I hadn't done anything. If I had sat in jail for two weeks, I might have pled guilty even if it involved a week of jail time and a fine, just to get out.
Kalief Browder spent almost 3 years in Riker's Island awaiting trial just to have the charges dropped. People on here told me that showed that the justice system worked. I said that his life was destroyed by this, and he would probably end up dead soon. I got downvoted furiously. He'd killed himself 2 years later.
I always assumed this kind of behaviour was cherry picked on social media. How “normal” is it actually?!
Except at Waffle House.
Bacically, it is not rare at all. Especially among certain American demographic.
Another lens is to look at is state violence rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
In particularly bad neighborhoods in the US -- it happens sometimes.
Depending on what kind of life you live in the US, it could be completely foreign to you, or it could be normal.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/09/frontier-air...
Anyone who says this stuff isn't normal in America doesn't get out much apparently. Living in the US is nuts.
>Meanwhile, on 3 May, a United Airlines plane arriving in Newark, New Jersey, from Venice, Italy, clipped a delivery truck and a light pole, which in turn struck a Jeep. Only the delivery truck driver was injured, but the plane was damaged extensively and the NTSB classified the case as an accident while also opening an investigation.
From the article. "Rare" occurrences... three times a week. In the meantime, Japan runs an airport for 30 years and never even loses one piece of luggage. The US is not on the same level as Japan. Any insistence otherwise is just cope.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4951240/this-japanese-a...
edit: ohhhh oops weasel wording. You're right, he did in fact have multiple judicial hearings! It's functionally irrelevant since none of them ever had the power to release him or find him innocent.
But essentially, somebody else sent her a package with something illegal in it that she didn't ask for. The police took her passport for a few months and searched her house. After a few months, she got her passport returned to her, she left Japan temporarily, but when she came back, they arrested her "to ensure [she] wouldn't flee while they finished the investigation".
She also mentioned it was "the most normal type of thing you can think of"; it might have been something like pseudoephedrine/Sudafed. That's a common over-the-counter drug in other countries but it's very illegal here in Japan (unless it's under 10%, or you buy it from Japan)!
Edit: Importing pseudoephedrine above 10% concentrations is illegal, but you can legally buy some higher concentrations over-the-counter while in Japan.
E.g. Contac 600 Plus can be found in basically all drug stores and it has 120mg of Pseudoephedrine, 100mg Caffeine, 8mg Chlorpheniramine, and 0.4mg of Belladonna Extract. It sounds like it'll actually be illegal to import into Japan, since 120/(120 + 100 + 8 + 0.4) is over 10%, but I've previously just walked into a drug store and bought a packet.
But, it's not unheard of to get randomly stopped by the police and searched, especially in touristy areas like train stations. Unless you're a Japanese citizen, you have to show ID, and although the searches are optional, most people agree to them.
For customs, usually a few people from each plane are searched.
Anecdotally, if you're a tourist, they're usually looking for medicine that was legal outside of Japan, but illegal within Japan, with small amounts leading to being detained for 23 days (like in this blog post). And if they decide to prosecute you, you'd probably get a suspended sentence (so no prison time), but you'd get deported and a temporary ban from coming back to Japan.
This seems ultimately like a very bad sales pitch for the tourism industry in Japan. I had thought I wanted to go to Japan but if I can accidentally, without malice, be thrown in a prison for 20 days that seems like a bad system.
I can't imagine the international relations of the ruling classes of various countries to the UAE would be trending in a positive direction if they arrested and punished people for walking off a plane with airplane bottles of alcohol.
For what it is worth different countries have vastly different recommendations for HBP and these drugs. I recommend discussing with the pharmacists in your country.
In the US I have been told it's a strict "never", in Ireland I was told that it wouldn't have a measurable effect on blood pressure. I've also measured my personal blood pressure (pre-hypertension to stage 1) and have not been able to measure a difference in blood pressure.
Due to their history, laws regarding stimulants are harsher in Japan than in many other places in the world [1] and this frequently takes people by surprise. Not that Japanese laws related to illegal drugs are lenient to begin with.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Japan
> She also mentioned it was "the most normal type of thing you can think of";
This doesn't really answer the question, though. It's frustrating to try to interpret these stories with a lot of writing and video describing everything except the crucial detail about what the charges were for.
I don't think she's trying to withhold information to avoid contaminating the case because she's spilling other details all over the place that could be used to influence the case. Yet the key piece of information that is supposedly "the most normal" isn't revealed
Is it really a crucial detail though? As someone having lived in Japan for a long time, I see no reason why we can not discuss the fact that civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking without resorting to "Do they deserve it in light of what they were suspected for?". I personally see no reason why suspects can not deserve decent sleep, meal, bedding, etc. even if they may be Shoko Asahara himself.
For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
Literally the central trigger point of the story.
> For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
Then I can see why you're not interested in the details
All this story does it makes me want to avoid traveling to Japan. I don't fancy getting picked up for jay walking and tortured.
What an awful system..
Sure if you naively believe the hyperbole then don't go. Been 3 times, you'll know when you're in trouble, and you will have a chance to correct it before it goes further.
Infact according to her video she did have a chance, and she didn't bother.
So rationalizations of why it’s appropriate because the person was suspected of XYZ isn’t going to land with them and is largely irrelevant.
But I don’t mind playing devils advocate.
Should the justice system force confessions out of murderers? No, because they are only potential murderers and we have historically been able to get innocent parties to confess. People with vulnerability such as mental health problems are even more likely to give false confessions. The goal of requesting testimony should be honesty not compliance.
This logic applies as well the drug dealer, drug users, and jay walkers. It’s a moral principle disconnected from any specific geography so even if we are not Japanese and have no intention to interact with Japan, we can say they have not lived up to that principle.
the administive pretrial detention is also pretty common, especially nowadays with the ICE craze.
nobody should be treated like this, agreed, but that doesn't mean that the process has no correlation to the level of guilt established and the certainty of it.
(the real problem is that it's way too many bullshit laws.)
Japan has a very harsh system, this serves as both a deterrent and also incentivizes people to make their equivalent of plea deals.
There's nothing magical about a criminal trial, especially in Japan, since there's not even a jury. And in general there's no magical threshold for proving guilt.
Nobody should be treated like this. We agree.
I'm trying to point out that unfortunately is a trade off, it works, and unfortunately a lot of people are getting treated like this all over the world for things that are administratively easy to prove and are illegal by the letter of the law, so technically easy to "prove guilt".
The fact that you and other insist on this really gets at the crux of this whole problem. There are two notable positions on criminality and punishment: yours, which is broadly that the justice system exists, at least in part, to deliver righteous punishment on the deserving, and the position of those appalled by the treatment here, which is that the purpose of the justice system is primarily to protect people, and then to deliver predictable, proportionate punishment of those found guilty to disincentivize criminal behavior. If you think that torture of someone detained but not found guilty might be justifiable if they're accused of a sufficiently heinous crime then you have an illiberal position that can and will be used to enable abuse of the criminal justice system to inflict extralegal punishment on anyone for any reason.
I said this is an important detail to the story because it’s literally the central trigger point. For as many details as she’s willing to share, include admissions that could theoretically impact legal proceedings, excluding the core charge from the story raises suspicions about the trustworthiness of the narrator.
To be clear I do not support the treatment as reported. However the omission of this one key detail is a calculated omission by the author, where we’re supposed to both believe it’s entirely normal and benign but at the same time it’s also something that must be withheld from this story?
I watched a little bit. She went overseas and the police asked for some information and she didn't respond. When she returned they deemed her a flight risk because she hadn't responded to the things they were asking.
If I had the police over, was an ass, had them come back, was an ass again. Then at some point they’re going to just think I’m the person that’d run away while they conduct their investigation.
I’m sure bad policemen exist in Japan, but all the ones I’ve met have been very friendly and reasonable.
The main difference I see are that police can hold you for a much longer period before bringing you in front of a judge and the bail conditions. Regarding the specific detention conditions, they do not strike me as worse than American jails.
23 days of her life gone over dropped charges.
I can believe that (and your sudafed guess is likely correct), but then why be obscure about it, when you could say 'turns out xyz is illegal in Japan, do not let your well meaning friends/family mail you medicine of any kind'? However, I don't watch the whole video. I know this hyper-edited style is popular nowadays but to me it feels like advertising/bait and I don't want to invest the energy to parse it.
I dont think so. I think innocent until proven guilty is the right way to go. Because all the police know is that he is accused of stabbing someone. Whether he actually did it or not, a court of law will decide that while he is present to be tried. Until then You cant punish someone like this over an accusation. You can deny bail if the person might be dangerous, but you cant punish them
This is bullshit and the japanese should be ashamed of having such a system while being considered a part of the civilized world. If this was china people would be rightfully losing their mind
There are many examples of police letting suspects go due to lack of evidence and then later discovering they let the wrong person go. These stories generate a lot of outrage in cases where there's public interest or a news story, but this is the reality of crime: You don't always have enough evidence to justify detaining someone, but the police's job is to quickly try to find enough evidence to find the right perpetrator
I know what bail is and that is should denied in certain cases. Even if bail should be denied for an accused stabbing, there are alot of other things innocent until proven guilty implies that japan doesnt meet the mark on, like feeding people proprrly and not mentally torturing them
> You can not bring or keep anything including a bra or even your own underwear.
presuming the author is male.
Perhaps this is a regional thing, but in my experience, they absolutely do.
Mailer also successfully advocated for Abbott's parole. Six weeks later, Abbott stabbed to death the manager of a restaurant he was eating at after an argument.
And also remember this treatment is at the point where they haven't been charged with anything, haven't been tried in court, and haven't been convicted.
The US's justice system is certainly lacking in many, many ways, but wow, this is barbaric. And it's designed for one thing: high conviction rates, regardless of guilt or innocence.
I am lucky enough to have a lot of middle aged middle class white male privilege.
I wonder how many minority people in the US have much worse opinions and life experience of the justice system than you're implying?
I wonder how many people consider typical ICE arrests and detention to be at least as "barbaric" and "psychological torture" as what's described in the article?
I wonder how many young African American males (and their families) look at the private for-profit prison system and conclude the US justice system and policing are designed for "high conviction rates, regardless of guilt or innocence.
92% of the prison system is government-run, no need to exaggerate.
>conclude the US justice system and policing are designed for "high conviction rates, regardless of guilt or innocence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate
You can see that's not a particularly useful metric to evaluate a legal system (and in the US, states, tribal, federal differ).
Americans ostensibly have the bill of rights in their favor, while Japan doesn't. Sure, you can't be indigent if you expect a vigorous defense from the state, but your odds are good if your case isn't hopeless, and many are - the incidence of plea deals typically reflects this.
Add that to highest incarceration rate in the world - around 600 people per 100k residents (japan for example is 40 per 100k).
You get what people call for-profit prison system. It's not some secret or controversial claim.
That's as true at the DMV as it is for the DOD and BOP, isn't it? Even Japan's system buys goods from the private sector and hires people.
The stated purpose of the prison system(s) is to store people away from communities as part of the justice process until they can reenter society. The evidence of that is clear in the inmates held, something to the tune of 1-1.5m when you add up state and federal prisons. I think it's straightforward to explain a higher incarceration rate than Japan through a higher crime rate than Japan.
Incarcerations (using yours) - US is ~15 times higher US: 600/100k JP: 040/100k
Murder (2023 [1]) - US is ~25 times higher US: 5.76/100k JP: 0.23/100k
Yes, there are more crimes than homicide, but the US trends more criminal and more violent than JP. Our demographics and culture are different than JP.
>It's not some secret or controversial claim.
It's a claim without direct proof relying on inference where people will see what they want to see like a Rorschach test, similar to calling a conflict a 'war for oil' or the broader description of the military-industrial complex.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1374211/g7-country-homic...
Still not as bad as what we've seen ICE do, for (allegedly) overstaying your visa, no less: no due process, children being separated from their parents and whereabouts unknown, horrible warehouse-like conditions, denial of medical care, people dying in custody, etc. Have any Japanese citizens been shot dead by police? [0]
And that's before we even get to talking about the injustices of the "war on drugs"; are Japanese police shooting and killing young black males in the back?
Yeah, the article is horrific, but I think Japan still has a ways to go to fall as low as the US these days unless you're white with money.
I will say though that _in principle_ the US' justice system is much better because it's based on presumption of innocence, due process, rights, etc. Japan uses a so-called "inquisitorial" system, based on the French legal system, where the judge is also the investigator, with detention while the investigation moves forward.
It's just that the reality in the US is different, depending on your visa status, color of your skin, and income level.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_...
Guantanamo, "secret" CIA "prisons" around the world.
Japan is probably worse than Northern Europe, but it's still pretty high on "if I had to be arrested, I'd rather it was here" list.
The charges could be very serious but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, because being charged (or even just arrested) is not the same as being convicted. The author of this post claims both of their charges were dropped.
So, what, let’s torture anyone that _might_ have done something “serious?” No judge, no jury, just if a cop thinks you might have done something, straight into a psychological torture cell for weeks and months while they think about your case? wtf
Also, your description of their experience as “not pleasant” just kind of blows my mind. Like it was a long line at the DMV or something.
Most of the post explains how she wasn’t allowed to do the things you’re suggesting she do, and at the end it explains how her charges were dropped.
A lot of us live with this background feeling that "if you get arrested here, you're done" even if you didn't do anything. Part of it is the system. But part of it is also a cultural thing where being suspected at all is somehow seen as your fault. The people around you start treating you differently before any verdict.
Whatever the underlying charge actually was, none of this should follow from an arrest before any conviction. You were innocent and they still put you through 35 days. As a Japanese person reading this, I'm just sorry. That shouldn't have happened.
I’m guessing either she didn’t understand the warnings, or she didn’t follow their guidance.
Simple example, they may have asked her to follow a procedure before leaving the country, and she didn’t because she “thought it was over”.
The law enforcement machine in Japan doesn’t like to arrest people. 99% of the time or so, it only arrests when they have an open-and-shut case and/or the person had been warned multiple times.
Maybe this has changed in the age of social media influencers, maybe this is different for black people, but Japanese cops have always taken the discrete approach with me and the folks I’ve known (both Japanese and non-Japanese).
Your theory lines up best with Occam's Razor: it's the more likely and simple theory, and probably true. Even so... what counts as "risky"? And the reason for her detention was having been sent something illegal from the outside. The speculation has been OTC drugs which are legal elsewhere but not in Japan. But what would that have to do with "risky" previous behavior? Granted, she missed responding to an email while she was out of country, but that hardly seems substantive either.
Honestly, it seems much more likely that she was targeted because she's visible on social media or because she's black or because she's female; or perhaps she's in some undocumented category of special contempt because she's all of those things.
On that note, I checked out her social media and she showed a property remodel and after purchasing property in Japan. It seems to me like that might show the way to others too. What better way to dissuade future immigration by simply randomly detaining folks in categories they don't like? Of course they would never do something so unseemly so as to make laws specifically disallowing blacks, single females, or even just foreigners but then again the pendulum in Japanese politics is swinging towards conservative isolationism again, no? So, it wouldn't be surprising. And if her own testimony on YouTube is to be believed and she isn't omitting anything, then I have little reason to believe any other version of this.
All that aside, and to keep this in perspective, I have no doubt that Japanese treatment of prisoners in general and even of foreigners is still by and large very good; but it's still unsettling to hear about how this was handled and about how "hostage justice" is the norm there. It seems beneath like it should be beneath them and it's very surprising to learn this about their system.
However, fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), you can't bribe officials. Japan is a society where it's difficult to get special treatment by giving money, not just to officials. If you try to use bribes, you'll only be looked down upon and put in a worse position.
It happened in a Round1 (near Umeda in Osaka), we knew exactly when since we sat down to play Mario Kart and after one race it was gone. First the police tried to convince us that we just forgot it somewhere. Eventually we convinced them to check cameras, and they said it was a blind spot. They refused to check entrance and exit cameras.
She had her airpods in there, and we could track the location, they refused to look at any cameras in the area (we tried searching the area ourselves but couldn't locate them, we figure the thief chucked it somewhere hard to find). We had the serial numbers of USD that was in the bag, they wouldn't even write it down.
Currently still waiting for an official report so that we can try and deal with their immigration to move her visa to another passport.
Having spoken to her embassy, it's the second time they've heard the story (same exact Round1, same Mario kart section). And if it's happened twice to citizens from her country, it probably happens more.
The whole thing made me completely disillusioned with Japan. Yes, statistically it's extremely safe, but if something does happen, don't expect any help. Reading this story just makes me think I should avoid any interactions with police if at all possible, and I've stopped carrying my passport with me. I rather get fined than having it stolen.
I can't logically think of any other lawfully worse punishment than what was described in the article. I don't know what they'd do for breaking rules in these situations, to be honest.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/asa220...
* Paolo fromTOKYO - "Why Japan Arrests Foreigners" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo (14m23s) [2019-08-16]
The Stasi had beds, some sense of privacy through proper doors, and an hour a day one might spend outside in a small courtyard to get some sunlight.
However the level of psychological torture (sleep deprivation, hours of standing/sitting in a prescribed posture, hourly checks, ...) appears to be milder in Japan. The Stasi could take that pretty far once they weren't allowed to use physical torture anymore.
The conviction rate was already terrifying, but this probably nails the coffin.
And this in a country where the yakuza is a sanctioned part of the society?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Current_situation
I do agree with the justice/prison system being incredibly scary, though!
After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.
Every bike in japan has individual registration or, same thing, a registered owner, as you found out.
You stole a bike, when you could have ignored it or reported it as a lost object.
There were consequences, which shows the system is working properly.
The police were surprisingly kind despite your actual crime, as you did not get the same treatment as the OP.
In this case, the author evidently _was_ a law abiding person, so the optimization failed, senselessly, likely out of a systemic effort to strike enough fear in the populace to over-index towards avoiding the possibility of this sort of situation. (Much like Singapore caning people for minor offenses.)
Whether or not you agree that such draconian punishments or processes are effective or fair is a different discussion, but this person was LITERALLY not supposed to be in jail, so how fair is it that they were removed from polite society for over a month in such poor conditions and at considerable expense?
Especially If you’re wrongfully arrested. “Optimizing society for law abiding people” means the opposite of what you think it means.
Jail's job is to keep you around during your legal process. You're not supposed to enjoy jail but it's not supposed to be torture, either. Torture does not belong in a civilized society and especially should not be used against those who have not even been formally charged. much less convicted, of a crime.
Hard disagree. Prison is the one you're not supposed to enjoy, jail is the place you use to keep people BEFORE they are judged.
A jail should limit the people held only as much as needed for the safety of the public and the handlers, but no punishment should be inflicted because no one's a convicted criminal (yet).
And in any case, prison should have a strong component of making the guilty person fit to live among others. A person that's been made to sit still staring at the wall for all their waking life for years is a person I definitely don't want as a neighbour, because there's no way they come out of that sane.
They change their mind oh so quickly after
Also remember that this article is about an experience before any charges were filed, before she'd seen a court room, before she even had the opportunity to prove her innocence or be convicted. "You are not supposed to be in jail" is a laughably naive way of looking at this type of situation.
I agree, and this system is meant to hold people before they have evidence meaning it can hurt law abiding people.
So even if the prosecution decides to drop your case, you're already fucked -- this is not how proper justice system should work.
You can have western values while also having Japanese peacefulness.
Not only relevant to Japanese prosecutors, but the system there makes it very easy for people to just confess (legitimate or false) and pay a fine.
As a Mexican friend puts it for Mexico: Dress as the police should believe you.
I'd think a formal or business casual attire, with proper grooming, is a rather international signal that you're vaguely alright in your ways.
Anything specific you reckon otherwise for?
Like all "migrant workers", they're considered low class and are treated that way, similar to how Turkish people are treated in Germany.
I assume the OP is actually referring to these returned second generation Japanese.
The more bland the colors, the more you blend in and easier it is to flow through places.
So say if someone shoves you on a subway in Tokyo, do not ever shove back or do anything worse. Move away, get witnesses / evidence if you can, then report. (I've also witnessed an attacker try to exploit this rule, where they would intentionally injure themselves during the conflict and then claim that the defendant did it, so be aware of that)
Oh, and other things that can get you arrested:
- Not promptly returning someone's lost property such as a wallet. There was a case here in the newspapers recently.
- A review about a business that damaged their reputation, even if it was true (but you don't have 100% evidence). eg. "I got food poisoning from here". Be very careful what you post and say online as defamation laws are very different.
oh, and maybe not arrested, but get in trouble for: if you place your household rubbish into not your designated collection point, even though the point is the closest to your home. (Also don't get me started on the topic of sorting trash...)
Being laxist towards criminals is not just being cruel to the victims to me: to me it is downright complicity with the criminals.
BTW: Japan happens to be one of the safest country on earth. A friend who's a pilot told me: "Tokyo is the only city in the world where I've women from my team (mostly air hostesses but also female pilot or co-pilot) go for a run at 3am". Now he didn't fly to every city in the world but I can name a great many cities where a fit woman won't go joking in yoga pants at 3am. And so can he.
Japan is safe because of other factors, not their conviction rate.
> they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people
And this is completely baseless.
For example, pretty much everything kulahan wrote about Japan in the grandparent comment is completely made up. Good narrative, emotionally aligned, feels true, stated with complete confidence, but absolutely fictitious.
1) You obviously don't understand the Japanese legal system.
2) You're very comfortable lying, and making up false claims about the Japanese legal system.
3) You don't address your lies when they are called out.
4) There are genuine issues with the Japanese legal system that you could critique, but you're unable to articulate these issues and instead resort to (2).
For example, you could critique Japan's 23 day arbitrary detention policy, but instead you focused on Japan's high conviction rate which is actually very comparable to that of other nations.
If you didn't invent lies, then your comments would be received differently.
Edit: Japan literally has a higher conviction rate than authoritarian regimes. It's like trying to argue the US doesn't have a birthing problem because we "only" have 5.6 infant deaths per thousand.
Yeah, you have no understanding of the systems you are talking about, nor any understanding of the numbers you are copy-pasting. You are comparing apples to oranges. The United States federal conviction rate, when measured using the same metrics as the Japanese conviction rate, is ~99.6% [0]. Read the Pew Research article Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted in 2022 to understand why [0].
The Japanese system is structured so that prosecutors do intense filtering before indictment. In Japan, prosecutors decide to indict in fewer than one-third of referred cases. Approximately 65-70% of cases are dropped before formal charges are filed. After charges are filed, post-charge dismissals are extremely rare (0.026%) and only occur in extraordinary cases. The post-charge dismissal rate is essentially zero.
By contrast, the United States federal system filters less aggressively before indictment. It allows 83% of referred cases through to indictment. It then filters again, and drops 8.2% of charged defendants after charges are filed, in post-charge dismissal.
The United States system has post-charge dismissals, and the Japanese system does not. These are fundamentally different systems, and cannot be compared directly. To make the systems comparable, US post-charge dismissals should be counted as pre-charge dismissals like they would be under the Japanese system. Then the metrics can be compared equivalently.
When measured on the same metric (acquittals as a share of all formally charged defendants), the gap between the two systems disappears. Japan's acquittal rate is approximately 0.1%. The US federal acquittal rate is 0.4%. Both are under 1%.
> "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go" and "we literally never make a mistake"
This claim demonstrates no understanding of the Japanese legal system. Approximately two-thirds of cases in the Japanese legal system are dropped before charges are filed. This is what happened to the woman in the submitted article, there was not enough evidence to prosecute, so the charges were dropped. Japan's rate of dropping charges is far higher than in the United States legal system, where only 25% of cases are dropped pre-charges, and another 8% are dropped post-charges. The US system only drops one-in-three cases. Japan drops two-in-three cases. Comparing the two systems, Japan prosecutes half as many cases as does the United States, on a per-case basis.
The irony is, Japan literally falls under your invented category of "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go". Japan lets people go at twice the rate of the US federal system. You're parroting claims without any understanding of the system behind it.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/14/fewer-tha...
Edit: also very funny that you’re comparing it to the USA - one of the worst developed nations’ criminal justice systems. Shit I’d almost rather get arrested in Russia. Could you compare it to a nation that isn’t the constant butt of jokes in the specific topic we’re discussing?
There are many places women can run at 3am - Singapore, Bangkok, jut from top of my head.
And living in Tokyo, I woudn't advise any women to do jogging at 3am.
It's an obvious deficit in civilization itself that we can't have, or even seem to come up with, a principled justice system. We just intermittently ban specific atrocities and hope that eventually adds up to justice.
But too often the system makes criminals into worse humans. That’s unhelpful.
The vast majority of folks who get detained in Japan either did something particularly obvious (DUI, violence with a weapon, etc.), or they had been warned multiple times about illegal behavior.
Sometimes the crime they are busted for seems trivial (e.g., Al Capone and tax evasion in the US), but there are other more serious crimes that they have been involved with or expected to be involved with.
I have literally never heard of any innocent person being detained in Japan, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times in the US (esp. for peaceful protesters).
That said, I know of many cases in Japan for which very guilty people were given appropriate warnings rather than detention and prosecution, and behavior changed.
Is this actually true or just fearmongering? I mean really, no chance to explain? Sounds as dumb as being forced into a psychiatric ward for wearing a pink shirt.
Absolutely hilarious if you have any knowledge of Japan. Your umbrella is the one thing that is absolutely not safe if you leave it unattended. Japanese will joke about this.
This really calls the whole article into question.
It’s also amusing to me that anything Japan related winds up on the front page of HN, but a similar article for a different country would probably go un-voted.
Mostly fear mongering or law breaking that is commonly punished throughout the world.
In order:
- nonsense, unless heated argument includes assault or disturbing the peace
- stealing… yes, it’s a crime. Usually handled with an apology and repayment if charges are brought. Completely overlooked if it was an actual one-off accident.
- overstaying visa - also a crime. Self-reporting to an immigration office will usually lead to a light punishment of “return home and 1-year re-entry ban”. People who live in Japan on tourist visas and do short visa runs are scrutinized carefully.
- grabbing umbrella or bike - fear mongering. This happens all the time. If it comes to a head, just apologize. I will say that there is a bit of an art to umbrellas and bikes — either embrace the musical chairs, or take actions such that it is less likely to happen to you.
from japan.
Just look at this thread. Yakuza? Taking umbrellas = go to jail? These people are morons. Worse, they think they are informed.
Maybe the BoJ didn’t burn enough money on US bonds this week or something. I can never understand the timing of these things or who is funding them.
For those somehow actually considering this: make sure to check local laws, might be super illegal or at least inadmissible, (im)morality nonwithstanding. Although just because it's illegal, inadmissible, or immoral, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it of course.
Also maybe don't use the Meta glasses for this, even if you do decide to go for it. Not so sous anymore if you do.
You simply cannot film or take pictures of people in public without consent.
Doing this is a crime in Japan. You are thus advocating for people to commit crimes in Japan. Terrible advice.
Fact check... anyone can confirm this treatment is standard in Japan?
The facilities and food look slightly better (maybe because it's a detention centre in Tokyo), but it mostly matches. Although the mangaka seemed to have a much more positive outlook on it, probably because they could read all the Japanese books they wanted and speak to their cellmates in Japanese.
This attitude is so unbelievably prevalent among native English speakers. "Obviously everyone should speak *my* language -- why should I ever have to learn another one?"
Seriously, what is so baffling about expecting an interpreter to be provided? Even if you do "speak" the language, this is not some everyday environment, and evidently not a good-faith one either. If I got into a similar situation in the US or similar, you can be sure as shit I'd ask for one too, even though I do believe I have a reasonable command over the English language in general.
I guess I see what you mean, but I feel there would have been a way to express this all better.
That's not the issue. At least in the US it is unconstitutional to bar inmates from speaking or communicating in non-English languages.
Likewise the US legal system is required to provide you an interpreter who can speak in a language you are proficient in.
Whether these rights are properly upheld in the US is another question but they are rights you are entitled to.
That's the main issue. These are rights that Americans are accustomed to and it's not always obvious to them when they leave the country that these rights aren't universal among developed countries.
To be clear, what the author said is that communicating in any language besides Japanese is prohibited with anyone. So if you share a cell with an inmate who speaks your native language, you're not allowed to speak with them in that language. I think that expected to be allowed to speak with inmates is not a sign of arrogance, and I don't know any other country that has a similar restriction.
Another issue is whether the author is allowed to communicate about her case in her native language. If she's asked to sign forms, make statements, or expected to understand her legal procedure, one would expect that the police would provide a translator to ensure that she's treated fairly. Certainly, that would be the norm in the West.
Sounds a heaven for someone who is ready for it but hell for those whose thoughts run amok.