* Paolo fromTOKYO - "Why Japan Arrests Foreigners" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo (14m23s) [2019-08-16]
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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
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.
>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?!
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.
Except at Waffle House.
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
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.
But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
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.
I’m not familiar with this term. Is that an old thing?
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.
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.
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).
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...
"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."
> You can not bring or keep anything including a bra or even your own underwear.
presuming the author is male.
Sounds a heaven for someone who is ready for it but hell for those whose thoughts run amok.
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.
As a Mexican friend puts it for Mexico: Dress as the police should believe you.
The more bland the colors, the more you blend in and easier it is to flow through places.
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?
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.
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.
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.
You can have western values while also having Japanese peacefulness.
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.
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.
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.
Especially If you’re wrongfully arrested. “Optimizing society for law abiding people” means the opposite of what you think it means.
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?
They change their mind oh so quickly after
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.
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...)
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!
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.
Fact check... anyone can confirm this treatment is standard in Japan?
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.
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.
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.