Seems like it's not pleasant, and the author says in theory it could be as low of a bar as getting into a heated argument; but the author never discloses his actual charge, which I think is critical context.
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.
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.
> somebody else sent her a package with something illegal in it that she didn't ask for.
> 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
> 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.
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
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.
For most people, the critique of Japan is because their own countries used to operate jails in this way.
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.
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.
Fair I suppose. I guess one can treat this either as a personal story (although frustratingly scattered across multiple places and incomplete) or as a description of a single instance of an arrest in Japan.
It is? Because the whole ‘is it awful’ thing hinges pretty strongly on how many options you were given to avoid it before going there.
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.
civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking
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.
But… it doesn’t matter? Even if it was some very illegal drug, that doesn’t change the fact that this detention system (and Japans justice system in general) is quite inhumane.
Likely some sort of stimulant as you point out. It is hardly the first time either as there have been public cases like this numerous times over the last two decades. Some cases even ending with deportation. The one I remember most vividly was someone carrying an unlabeled bottle of ADHD medication that had been sent to them while they were in South Korea by their pharmacist mum in the US; that they then ran afoul of when entering Japan. Similarly, there was a case at the University of Tokyo in the 00s, where an overseas student got sent an (allegedly) unprompted package with cannabis (not a stimulant though) from friends abroad. Allegedly, they were expelled and we got university-wide, anti-drug campaigns with memorable slogans like: "Illicit drugs are illegal".
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.
Skimming the video there's also important unstated context that the person was non-white foreigner, had tattoos, and on visa. It's possible that the combination made an ambiguous grey-area situation much worse.
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.
You can still easily buy it here, but the over-the-counter pills are always mixed with other ingredients to make it more difficult to convert them into amphetamines.
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.
Not for the ones you buy in Japan, since those are legal.
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.
Probably the same thing you do in the states if you have high blood pressure: make do with lesser medications, pain killers, lots of liquids, and push through it.
Warning: This is not medical advice, I am a nerd on the internet not a doctor
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.
They _do_ specifically protest, and it's crazy that they're able to detain you like this from an accusation while they build a case, even if you're innocent. In the US, barring flight risks and past history or cases of real malice or violence or an ongoing threat, you can at least typically make bail, AND the conditions in a jail are generally far better and less strict than this:
>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.
> In the US, barring flight risks and past history or cases of real malice or violence or an ongoing threat, you can at least typically make bail
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).
> 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 legal system doesn't have the resources to move forward with the case and decides it isn't a priority. I've seen this happen many times with people I know committing violent felonies.
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.
The thing is, this is pretty standard treatment over in Japan. As the blog poster says, the charge against them was ultimately dropped, but not before they were held for over 30 days. The 23 day timer on charges is, as they said, something that is often exploited by the police; they can add charges later to reset the clock. While this is going on, you're often pressured to sign a confession. You may get offered a comparatively short or lenient punishment for confessing, as compared to potentially months of detention while the police perform their investigation and decide what to charge you with. It's a big part of why the conviction rate over there is so high; not confessing to a crime, even when innocent, can carry a punishment worse than conviction. Of course, then you have to consider that you now have a criminal record, so someone who lives in Japan may feel pressured to confess to avoid prolonged detention, but that can have other effects on them in the future.
Same in the USA. This is what “prosecutor deals” are for: plead guilty and we’ll let you off with a year in jail, make us hold a trial and the judge will give you ten years.
Right, but I intentionally avoided making that comparison because of the way the US justice system works. There are more escape hatches for someone who has been charged to be released while awaiting trial: bail, release on recognizance, habeas petitions, etc. These don't really exist in the same way in Japan.
It is not in fact the same in the USA. You cannot be held indefinitely without a judicial hearing and without access to a lawyer in the US. You can in Japan, and in fact that's the norm.
Tell Kalief Browder that. Oh wait, he killed himself after being held for three years without trial because prosecutors 'weren't ready' to actually try him for the accusation of theft, and without the option of bail because he had previously violated probation as a child.
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.
It doesn't matter what her charge was. Even (alleged/suspected) serial murderers and rapists should be treated humanely and not experience psychological torture.
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.
> The US's justice system is certainly lacking in many, many ways, but wow, this is barbaric.
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.
> The US's justice system is certainly lacking in many, many ways, but wow, this is barbaric.
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.
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.
Prisons in US might be run by gov but private companies profit heavily on services provided to these facilities. Basically everything possible is outsourced - commissary, food, healthcare, labour…
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.
>Basically everything possible is outsourced - commissary, food, healthcare, labour…
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.
Jack Henry Abbott was an American prisoner who corresponded with the author Norman Mailer, who successfully got a collection of his letters published as In the Belly of the Beast, which contain scathing critiques of the American justice and prison systems based on his own experiences therewith.
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.
Completely normal. Happens all the time. My plane was delayed this week because of an unruly passenger on the plane before mine at the gate. My plane had to be diverted into another state while they sorted him out. The day after I landed, I was walking to get something to eat, and there was a bum fight at the road entrance of a Target. They had a disagreement about who could panhandle there. On the way home, some guy climbed the fence and got on the runway. They don't know who he is though, he was sucked through the engine of a plane.
>Friday’s episode at Denver’s airport came one day after a Delta Airline employee died on Thursday night at Orlando’s international airport when a vehicle struck a jet bridge next to an airplane with passengers onboard, as the local news outlet WESH reported.
>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.
> If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different
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
Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean someone gets to go free until their court date. It depends on the crime, the flight risk, and the supporting evidence that police are able to collect.
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
> Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean someone gets to go free until their court date.
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
In the US, it's seen as a God-given truth that no innocent person should ever be punished. Partly because it was founded (in part) by oppressed minorities fleeing states where the were constantly harassed by authorities. (Irony - the US's approach hardly fixed the issue).
But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
> Partly because it was founded (in part) by oppressed minorities fleeing states where the were constantly harassed by authorities
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.
Now I'm entertaining myself by reframing the rebel barons (magna carta) as an oppressed minority, fleeing into their castles where they get harassed by siege engines.
> In the US, it's seen as a God-given truth that no innocent person should ever be punished.
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.
>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.
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.
IIRC the US has a bizzare system where you get a loan for bail from a private loan shark, so you pay a (not refunded) bond to the loan shark who pays the bail, then the loan shark (sorry, bail lender) eats the loss (or hires bounty hunters) if you skip town.
> In the US, it's seen as a God-given truth that no innocent person should ever be punished.
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 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.
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....
Back in the 19th century. De Tocqueville talks about American justice favouring the rich since they could post bail and the poor could not. I have seen documentaries about US bail hostels and some of them seem like horrific places as bad as prisons in some other countries and this is before you've been found guilty of anything.
The US only requires a jury to believe someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is accepted that there will be false positives where an innocent person will falsely get convicted due to this, but the hope is that the trade off is worth it.
Basically you’re talking about implementing The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Many innocent people have been sentenced to death in the US. The idea that jail or punishment solves crime also has no basis in fact.
Arrested is not the same as convicted. I lived in Japan for a few years, and I have heard of similar situations to what the article describes.
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.
It's actually not. You can be arrested and then released without charges, which is not a conviction but does not factor into the conviction rate statistic.
I was going to say the same thing. OP in this case would not count toward either percentage, what you have to wonder is how many people get charges dropped who get put through the ringer.
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.
Not sure why you were downvoted. From the last paragraph:
"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."
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.
Japanese, living here. I'd heard 人質司法 (hostage justice) used
in news commentary but never really pictured what it looked like
inside. 5-day showers, food slid through a slot, sleeping on the
floor with lights on. None of that is what most people here
imagine when they hear "detention."
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 will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior.
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).
> I will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior.
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.
For those interested, here is the YouTube channel of the author. She has several videos about her experience. I used to watch her channel, and after reading this article (although she never mentions her name), I clicked through a few more of her posts, and saw her photo and immediately recognized the name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=175yRhSaNfU
Before that timestamp she says there was an email that was asking for more information about the matter but she didn't have the information at hand or couldn't give it so she disregarded the email. That appears to be the impetus for deeming her a flight risk. I'm indifferent to whether or not that makes sense.
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.
I had to deal with the Japanese for the first time last week. My girlfriends bag was stolen with her passport.
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.
This sounds bad enough that it makes me wonder what the punishment for breaking the rules in jail is. If you can't sleep in a certain direction, what are they going to do if you refuse to obey? Or even can't obey because you don't speak Japanese?
According to amnesty international [0] you'd be put in solitary confinement and restrained with your hands handcuffed to a belt. From the report "Handcuffs
are not removed at any time, even during mealtimes, or when the prisoner needs to sleep or use the toilet."
Breaking rules in US prisons leads to solitary confinement. I'm assuming there's something similar in Japanese prisons, although the conditions sound like they can't get much worse...
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.
The Ministry for State Security in former East Germany had cells they'd dissappear people into. If you ignore the physical torture they employed in the earlier years, the actual cells themselves were somewhat more comfortable than what the Japanese got.
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 Yakuza seems to have a similar story as the American Mafia. Both have long histories, are favourite subjects of films and media, and both had a decline that sharpened in the 90s. A large part of that has been increasingly tight anti-Yakuza laws and ordinances. The whole "Law enforcement and indirect enforcement" section on Wikipedia is an interesting read, I linked part of it:
As a South Korean I'm lowkey surprised that most reactions posted here is describing the detention experience to be some kind of human rights abuse. Most Koreans debating on Internet demand severe punishment so criminals be afraid of getting jailed. I know this is a very questionable strategy, but afaik this is the most dominant public sentiment over this topic.
There is nothing about Japan that suggests otherwise. One example being whether you agree with capital punishment or not, their method of never giving you advance notice is torture, for both the prisoner and their family.
I love how this starts out by listing “innocent” laws that you can break. Its your job to know the laws of the country and if you break them you should be punished. US people love visiting Japan and talking about how safe it is. Why exactly do you think its so safe?
I live in the US and while most of us know about the more serious crimes that often get prosecuted, there is a long tail of crimes that no single person could memorize. Over 60,000 pages of federal laws alone.
Although the claim is likely exagerated, people apparently break on average around 3 laws per day. If the government wants to lock you up for something, they can build up a case
When I lived in Japan, one of my roommates was a brown American dude of Dominican ancestry. He, like me, was a clean cut, hard working international student attending a well regarded local university. We had for many months on our daily commutes to and from our school seen an abandoned bike sitting in the bottom of a canal / ditch, and we only had 5 bikes between the 7 of us living in the house, so after many months of seeing this discarded, unused bike rotting in a ditch, we decided to rescue it and fix it up so we could use it. A couple of days later, my roommate was riding the bike while Brown in Japan, and a couple of local cops took issue with this I guess, so he was arrested for "Possession of stolen property." He tried to explain at the time that he'd found it in a ditch, but they weren't having any of it and it ended up with all 7 of us who lived in the house getting hauled down to the local police station in handcuffs and questioned for an entire 24 hours all over a junk bike. We were only ever released when someone from our university got involved, and the cops managed to track down the owner of the bike who told them they'd thrown it in the canal because it was broken. The person who chucked their bike into a canal of course faced no consequences whatsoever, but me and my 6 housemates had to endure one of the most harrowing experiences of our lives all because we fished a rotting bike out a ditch and fixed it up.
After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.
Holy shit this is horrible. It really shows the true cost of having a disciplined public society. People love to hate on SF, and the homelessness. But I think it’s a society that prioritizes individual freedom which allows for both this outcome and the entrepreneurial environment we see.
None of this post seemed like necessary costs. You can arrest criminals while allowing more than one shower per 5 days, along with all the other absurd rules and restrictions here.
Japan absolutely does not stop being Japan just because they change their prison policy. Just like Sweden doesn't stop having a very well run society just because they don't have the same prison policies as the Japanese.
You can have western values while also having Japanese peacefulness.
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.
Society can be optimized for the law-abiding without being needlessly cruel.
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.
Sorry, I think you mean abiding*. But laws are not some moral edicts handed down by god. They can and often are wrong or seriously misguided. Laws can and should be broken if and only if the agent at hand has a thorough understanding of why they are violating the law. Breaking a law and antisocial behavior are not necessarily equivalent.
This is not about enjoying or not enjoying jail. If you happen to live and work in Japan in a typical job, getting arrested and held within this process for 23 days almost certainly means you're getting fired because you essentially have no contact with the outside world and even if you manage to sneak a word out through your lawyer, most of the employment contracts have clauses to extent of automatic termination for both missing enough days and breaking moral character.
So even if the prosecution decides to drop your case, you're already fucked -- this is not how proper justice system should work.
While I agree jail doesn't need to be enjoyable, it should at least be humane and free from torture (psychological or physical).
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.
If someone was arrested and their charges dropped, then what the government did was torture to a law abiding citizen and they should have a duty to compensate them appropriately.
Right, but there's a core conceit we use in the US (mostly) that you are innocent until you are proven guilty, and if you are wrongfully accused (as was evidently the case from the author), you should perhaps NOT be put into such a grim set of living conditions with essentially no rights.
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?
Wait until you will be thrown in jail and tortured for nothing. I have seen frw individuals like you who think "oh I obey the lay so this wouldn't happen to me".
That's the advice I give to anyone traveling internationally. You get treated a lot differently when you wear khaki slacks and an Oxford shirt (more professional rather than stylish) - even if you're wearing sneakers.
The more bland the colors, the more you blend in and easier it is to flow through places.
The Japanese like Africans, placing them only slightly lower than Europeans. Basically if you're not dressed like a thug and don't have certain tattoos, and aren't Brazilian, Korean or Chinese, you'll usually be treated pretty nicely.
IN 1990, Japan allowed entry of Brazilians of Japanese descent up to the 3rd generation, and many Brazilians went to Japan to work as cheap labor since Brazil's economic situation was pretty bad.
Like all "migrant workers", they're considered low class and are treated that way, similar to how Turkish people are treated in Germany.
Or dont go to an authoritarian state where something like this is accepted. Im astounded at people defending this. If it was china people would see this is messed up
another thing in Japan is that you can get arrested for self defence. Say if someone starts attacking you on the street, and eg. you punch back causing an injury, when you could have simply ran away and escaped, then you can get arrested and held for 23 days as a suspect.
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...)
I dunno, I think maybe that is a big part of why these countries are so safe? It is a form of meritocratic classism if you will. You are expected to be a certain kind of (law-abiding among other things) person. If you behave like you might not be the kind of person you get an implicit "social credit" downgrade and are treated like crap end to end. Sure, they might be "overreacting" all things considered, but in the US on the other hand there are examples of clearly dangerous people being catch and released because rights and dignity, until they actually murdered someone. There's a tradeoff, but the Japanese approach appears to be closer to the optimal point.
I don't mind criminals being punished. This person wasn't convicted of anything, yet was still punished. This isn't criminal punishment, this is just injustice. It's also the norm, pretty much everywhere.
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.
And what do you have to say to teenage girls or even little kid girls getting raped?
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.
Funny you say that because if you go to shinjuku right now there will be a bunch of scouts harassing high school girls to get into prostitution to the point of even running after them, and the police doesn’t seem to care. This has been going for years.
Japan's judicial system has something like a 99% conviction rate. It's "safe" because they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people in the process. So everyone is naturally going to be on their best behavior.
The claim that Japan is "safe" because it has a high conviction rate is a junk meme. The United States federal conviction rate is essentially identical to the Japanese judicial conviction rate when measured by the same methodology. It's roughly 99.6-99.8% depending on the year.
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
That's absolutely wrong. In the US it's closer to 93%. If you can't tell the difference between "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go" and "we literally never make a mistake", I don't think this conversation can continue in good faith.
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.
Both of these jurisdictions have low prosecution and high conviction rates, because the conviction rate is an artifact of prosecutors only going to trial if they now they'll win. In the US this is heavily confounded by plea bargains, since prosecutors can get punishments without even having to go to trial.
It comes from a cursory understanding of the world outside of western countries. People watch a few videos on youtube about other countries, or visit on vacation for a week, and assume they understand the mentality of people who live there. It's hubris. Then they apply western moralities to other cultures, implicitly assuming their own western ideals are superior.
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.
A single valid complaint about a nation isn't inherently some kind of propaganda. The only type of account that would imply this in this scenario (other than an extremely ignorant one) is a Japanese sock puppet account, ironically.
> Seems like the system is heavily stacked against detainees, regardless of whether they are actually innocent or guilty.
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.
Something as small as getting into a heated argument in public, accidentally taking an item you didn’t pay for, overstaying a visa, or even grabbing someone else’s umbrella or bike thinking it was yours can escalate further than you could imagine and have you arrested before you’ve even had a chance to explain.
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.
The article is vastly overstating some of that stuff. I used to live there.
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.
The surprise isn't about the arrest. The surprise is about the extremely harsh conditions people are placed in after being arrested--without any proportionality of what they were arrested for, before it is known whether or not they are guilty of the crime that was accused.
Rule 34 of internet conversations about justice is that someone will always say "just obey the law" even if the law is the death penalty for walking on the grass.
Far too many HN “Japan understanders” receive all their opinions about Japan from US activists who get paid to write hate pieces about Japanese culture.
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 can try looking at this manga posted by a Japanese person that was detained for marijuana possession https://xcancel.com/kime_neko/status/1634511023167381504. It's in Japanese, but you can use a machine translator and/or look at the drawings.
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.
> Language barrier: Forced to communicate only in Japanese
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.
> The arrogance of American tourists is truly boundless. How dare Japanese people not speak English! Who do they think they are?
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.
> The arrogance of American tourists is truly boundless. How dare Japanese people not speak English! Who do they think they are?
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?"
One would think "not being able to speak anything but Japanese" would be a problem for anyone not speaking Japanese, not just English speakers specifically, so this framing is more than a bit ironic, don't you think?
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.
An interpreter is in fact provided for important communications, but it's a given that there's not going to be interpreters on-hand for every foreign prisoner 24/7. I think most people would simply accept that a language barrier is a normal fact of life of being arrested in a foreign country. The expectation of not needing to speak a foreign language in a foreign country seems to be a uniquely English one, and it manifests in other ways. There are many people who come to Japan to teach English without understanding a word of Japanese, and then complain about the difficulty of life, how restaraunt staff won't speak English or provide an English menu for them, how this and that are not provided for in English. They don't attempt to learn Japanese even after teaching for 5+ years, and yet criticise Japan for not catering to their needs. The sense of entitlement gets nauseating after you've witnessed it enough.
You are legally entitled to an interpreter when being questioned by police or while in court. I believe the claims in the article are exaggerated, I would speculate intentionally so as the author is an engagement-farming content creator who has made several videos about the subject garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Of course, it is possible their experience was worse than what they are legally entitled to -- the real world often doesn't live up to ideals and legal rights can be violated -- but they speak in broad generalizations about the system as a whole that are not representative.
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.