From Confession to Conviction: Why Japan’s Criminal Justice System Resists Change

As a former professional boxer, Iwao Hakamada’s life took a dramatic turn when he started working at a small miso-paste factory in a city two hours by train from Tokyo. On 30 June 1966, the factory director and his family were brutally murdered, shattering the peace in the community and putting immense pressure on authorities to find the culprit. Despite the absence of solid evidence, Mr. Hakamada was arrested and subjected to a gruelling 20-day interrogation by over-zealous prosecutors. Over the whole period he was granted only a total of 37 minutes to consult with his legal counsel. After enduring excessive coercion for 19 days, he confessed. The majority of judges at the many stages of the trial did not fundamentally question the validity of the confession and confirmed time and again the death sentence initially given in 1968. Only in 2023, Hakamada’s case re-emerged for a rare retrial. Although media narratives have now shifted in his favour, the broader systemic issues within Japan’s criminal justice system remain unaddressed, particularly its heavy reliance on confessions and the severe limitations on defence rights in a society where crime rates are low, and public challenges to state authority are rare.

Why is meaningful change so difficult to achieve within Japan’s criminal justice system? This question necessitates an exploration of the deeper, often hidden mechanisms that sustain the status quo. Two key research methodologies offer valuable insights into this persistence. First, path dependency within historical institutionalism provides a framework for understanding how Japan’s modern criminal justice institutions emerged, remained stable, and when circumstances are favourable, change. By tracing the origins of Japan’s institutions, particularly during critical junctures such as the Meiji era (1868-1912) and World War II, and carefully analysing how these institutions have evolved, we can observe a historical continuity in interrogation practices. These practices often assume that suspects will unconditionally submit to intrusive inquiries – called ‘benevolent paternalism’ by Daniel H. Foote – by interrogators within a broader criminal justice institution where the organisational culture prioritises social order and peace (over individual rights), with prosecutors determined to uphold this mandate.

Second, legal consciousness approaches (hō’ishiki kenkyū), which were at the core of the development of sociology of law in Japan since its earliest development in the 1920s, are helpful to further uncover the mechanisms of stability and change within these institutions. This approach can be divided into two subfields: one focusing on the collective narrative within society and the other examining specific attitudes toward the law through everyday legal experiences of citizens. The first subfield, especially, requires further explanation. A collective narrative—referred to as the ‘policy image’ by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones—is a widely accepted perception of a policy or institution that blends empirical information with emotional appeal. This narrative can either support or challenge the existing policy framework or institutional status quo. Since the 1960s, Japan’s general narrative on law has been aligned with the broader societal discourse on ‘Japanese uniqueness’ (nihonjinron), which sought cultural explanations for Japan’s rapid post-WWII economic success. This narrative reinforced the status quo and hindered judicial reform. For example, efforts in the 1960s to increase the number of lawyers to manage Japan’s rapidly growing economy, as well as other reforms of the judiciary, ultimately failed due to the prevailing narrative that Japan was special and therefore did not need law.

However, this narrative began to shift in the 1990s during Japan’s ‘lost decade’, a period of deep economic and socio-political crisis. Reforms aimed at transitioning from regulated paternalism to deregulated individual initiative were seen as the only way forward to counter the hardships and address the challenges ahead. In parallel, significant judicial reforms—the most important since the aftermath of World War II—were also implemented. American-style law schools, established in 2004, were intended to ensure that future lawyers would actively respond to social needs and engage in diverse functions across society under the philosophy of the rule of law. In the field of criminal justice, the introduction in 2009 of the trial by jury (in Japanese called the Saiban’in system), where six citizens alongside three professional judges determine guilt and sentencing in the most severe criminal cases, was the cornerstone of these reforms. This change aimed to make public trials with accountable judges central to the criminal justice process, addressing what Ryūichi Hirano described in 1985 as a ‘hopeless’ (zetsubōteki) system, where courts functioned merely to confirm prosecutors’ determinations of guilt behind closed doors.

Yet, more than a decade and a half after the trial by jury was introduced, the fundamental structure of Japan’s criminal justice system remains largely unchanged: conviction rates are still extraordinarily high, confessions are still the primary objective of lengthy interrogations conducted without the presence of a lawyer, and the practice of ‘hostage justice’ (hitojichi shihō)—where suspects are detained and subjected to extremely harsh interrogations until they confess—continues. Recent cases, such as the Carlos Ghosn case, highlight these ongoing issues. More recently, the Tokyo Regional Court ruled on the 17^th July, 2024, against a prosecutor for illegal interrogation due to the infringement of the suspect’s personal rights. So too, in the Osaka High Court’s decision on August 8, 2024, the Court initiated a criminal case against a prosecutor for unlawful interrogation. Do these recent cases indicate that the collective narrative has shifted? While established institutions may not have undergone a fundamental transformation sufficient to disrupt the status quo, their persistence, despite reforms, suggests that change and continuity may coexist in a more nuanced interplay. Change can occur gradually, embedded within continuity, rather than through abrupt or radical movements. Further research is necessary to fully understand these subtler dynamics and how they shape the balance between continuity and change.

Sociology of law research on crime and criminal justice in Japan must consider the delicate balances that define the system. These include the tension between overarching institutional frameworks and individual cases, the interplay between historical institutional decisions and contemporary practices, and the persistent dichotomy between continuity and change. Moreover, understanding Japan’s criminal justice system requires examining the balance between repressive measures and restorative justice, as well as the trade-offs between effective law enforcement and the protection of human rights. While these insights may hold little relevance for Mr. Hakamada—now 88 years old and in poor mental and physical health—they are crucial for understanding why substantial change within Japan’s criminal justice system remains so elusive.

 

Iwao Hakamada was acquitted on September 26, 2024, marking the end of his 58-year legal battle. Prosecutors chose not to appeal the Shizuoka District Court’s ruling, which confirmed Hakamada’s innocence and revealed that crucial evidence against him had been fabricated.