Japan's 'Hostage Justice' Criminal System Faces a Reckoning

Prolonged detention, forced confessions undermining public trust in police

- Walter Sim

TOKYO — Japan's criminal justice system is under intense scrutiny after the courts, within months, twice accused law enforcement officials of fabricating evidence in their zealous pursuit of convictions.

The damning indictments in two cases — one involving murder, the other economic security — expose flaws in a system that prides itself on a 99.8 percent conviction rate.

On Oct 8, 2024, the nearly six-decade ordeal of former boxer Iwao Hakamada finally concluded when prosecutors decided not to appeal a retrial verdict that had exonerated him of four murders in 1966.

Mr Hakamada, now 89, was the world's longest-serving death row inmate. Sentenced to hang in 1968, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980, his fight for a retrial finally led to his release on bail in 2014 and acquittal a decade later.

More recently, on June 11, a High Court verdict was finalized to award Yokohama-based spray-drying equipment maker Ohkawara Kakohki 166 million yen (S$1.46 million) in damages. The court had heard a shocking admission from a police officer: The entire case was fabricated and driven by the "personal greed" of his superiors eyeing promotions.

The company, with fewer than 90 employees, makes equipment used for producing powdered products such as instant soup and pharmaceuticals.

In March 2020, three senior executives including president Masaaki Ohkawara, now 76, and ex-director Junji Shimada, now 72, were arrested on suspicion that their equipment could be used to make biological weapons. They were accused of breaching export control laws by selling to countries such as China without appropriate permits.

The trio were held for 332 days, with eight bail requests denied until February 2021. Tragically, bail came too late for former adviser Shizuo Aishima, who died of stomach cancer at 72 while in remand after failing to get proper medical attention.