AI Essay: Japan’s Structural Peculiarities — Wrongful Convictions and Hostage Justice

 I am not a legal expert. But I recently recalled two cases that raised a simple question in my mind—

a question about “hostage justice” and wrongful convictions in Japan.

Hostage justice refers to a core feature of Japan’s criminal justice system: the use of prolonged pre-trial detention to extract confessions. It is widely viewed as an anomaly in advanced democracies and has been the subject of intense international criticism.

Two cases brought this issue back into focus: the Carlos Ghosn case and the Okawara Kakoki wrongful conviction case. Both relied on the same justification for denying bail: “the risk of evidence destruction.”

● The Carlos Ghosn Case

Carlos Ghosn, former chairman of Nissan, was arrested on charges of underreporting compensation. Because he denied the allegations, he was held for an extended period— a textbook example of Japan’s “hostage justice.” After being granted bail, he fled to Lebanon, turning the case into global news.

● The Okawara Kakoki Wrongful Conviction Case

Three executives of a small manufacturing firm were arrested for allegedly exporting a spray dryer without proper authorization. The premise of the investigation was later proven false; the case was a complete miscarriage of justice. Because they denied the charges, bail was repeatedly denied. One of the executives developed stomach cancer during detention, received delayed treatment, and died.

In both cases, the logic was identical: “If you confess, you can go home. If you deny, you stay in jail.” This is precisely the mechanism criticized by the UN and Western media as hostage justice. Once detained in Japan, guilt or innocence becomes secondary; the system does not move forward unless the suspect admits wrongdoing. This dynamic inevitably produces false confessions—and wrongful convictions.

What is particularly troubling is the contradiction embedded in the phrase “risk of evidence destruction.” Arrest should presuppose that investigators already possess sufficient evidence to justify detention. Invoking “risk of evidence destruction” as a reason to deny bail effectively means:

“We arrested you without decisive evidence, and we need to keep you locked up until you confess.”

It is a structural contradiction at the heart of the system.

This contradiction stems from one fundamental feature of Japanese criminal justice: the unusually high value placed on confessions. In principle, a confession should be nothing more than a lead—useful only when corroborated by physical evidence. But in Japan, confessions often outweigh physical evidence. Several notorious cases illustrate this:

1. The Menda Case (first death-row acquittal in Japan)

2. The Zaidagawa Case (death sentence overturned in retrial)

3. The Matsuyama Case (death sentence overturned in retrial)

4. The Higashi-Sumiyoshi Case (2016 retrial acquittal)

5. The Ono Case (Tokyo serial murder case)

In each of these, the confession contradicted physical evidence, yet the confession was treated as decisive.

Why does this happen? To understand it, three structural premises must be acknowledged.

◆ Premise 1: Confession-Centric Justice

Postwar Japan faced severe shortages of personnel, resources, and investigative capacity. Under such constraints, extracting a confession became the most efficient—and cheapest—way to “solve” a case. Over time, this evolved into a system where a confession became the ultimate form of evidence, not because it was reliable, but because it was economical.

◆ Premise 2: Bureaucratic Self-Righteousness

Before the war, bureaucrats wielded great power but also bore heavy responsibility. After the war, GHQ reforms stripped away responsibility but left much of the power intact. The result was a system built on the assumption that bureaucrats do not make mistakes. Police and prosecutors inherited this culture. Their judgments are treated as inherently trustworthy— a structural “good faith” assumption embedded in the system.

◆ Premise 3: Judicial Deference

Japan’s courts, rather than functioning as an independent check on state power, operate within the same bureaucratic culture. They routinely defer to prosecutors, issue warrants almost automatically, deny bail in cases where suspects maintain innocence, and make retrials extraordinarily difficult.

Together, these three premises create a predictable chain:

Confession-centric system → Hostage justice → Wrongful convictions

As I have argued in previous essays on Japan’s postwar institutional legacy, Japan completed the “external” settlement of World War II—its reconciliation with the outside world— but never completed the “internal” settlement: the restructuring of domestic institutions built on prewar and occupation-era assumptions.

The criminal justice system is one of the clearest remnants of that unfinished internal settlement.

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English ver.