The Shinkansen Test

Well I am sure that some of you may have noticed that the output on the Japanese Blog has been somewhat Saharan. This has been due to both myself and the honourable Takayama absolutely scythed down by a viscious virus picked up on the plane out here. The problem has been that as we were more or less completely out of action for the first two weeks of this particular trip all of our normal workload turned into a bit of a mountain.

This having been said, I did manage to further my research into the effects of volcanic spa water on cold tins of lager with a trip into the mountains last week. Further research into this pressing subject will urgently be conducted before we leave in ten days time but that is not what I want to write about today.

Before leaving England I was asked by a person I had met if I saw Japan through rose tinted glasses. I believe not and whilst this blog generally takes a humourous but respectful look at the land of the rising sun as seen through the eyes of a stranger, in truth I haven't found that much to be hyper-critical of. This is about to change but before I unleash my critical voice I would like to clarify a position first.

There is absolutely nothing worse than arriving in another culture and giving it the "high hat". Looking down your nose at the workings of other peoples' way of life and criticising the country in which you are a guest. This is a particular problem seen in ex-patriot communities. I saw it in Spain in the early nineties when my very late father and his group of friends, British settlers, would sit and discuss all that was wrong with Spain and the lazy Spaniard. After many a brandy this group of retired "business-men" would inevitably conclude that "What Spain needs is another Franco." Not really a surprising outcome from men who had pictures of Margaret Thatcher on their white villa walls and amongst whom some of which had made their fortunes from her prison building programme.

The point I am making is that it is simply bad manners to arrive in another country and then start to pick holes in the way things are done. I notice that in English language newspapers published in Japan there are often letters from Americans critical of how the Japanese do things and I wouldn't want to be seen in such a dim light. As all who know me I hope will tell, I love Japan, I love the people, I respect their culture and am constantly amazed by its resilience and ability to marry progress with tradition.

A national icon: The first Shinkansen

Japan is a land known all over the world for producing innovation. The latest Shinkansen which travels north from Tokyo to Aomori is a fine example. Recent news on this amazing technical innovation told how the post war steam engines took 26 hours to make this journey. By the late sixties and the advent of the first generation of Shinkansen the journey time was down to 10 hours. As the world famous bullet train design improved the time came down and down and by the end of the nineties it was only a 5 hour trip time to this northern outpost. The new Shinkansen which commenced its timetable this year now does the trip in about 3 hours.

Shinkansen Innovation and Progress

One could comment on how we have yet to build a Shinkansen service in the UK and the much politically promoted "West Coast" line, our first attempt, will no doubt take four times as long to build as the project planners tell us, cost six times over budget and then come in with a great fanfare of political trumpets and an immediate speed restriction due to adverse weather conditions! Perhaps that is why Hitachi, Shinkansen train specialists, pulled out of the bidding for the contract!!!

This train technology is iconic in Japan and represents the Japanese nation at its best speaking volumes about Japanese culture. Any delay in the service whatsoever results in an item on the headline news of the state broadcaster, NHK, accompanied by a Shinkansen official bowing low and apologising publicly to the Japanese people. As previously reported on this blog, the worst snow in 70 years in 2009 saw a delay in the service of 25 minutes which was deemed to be only just acceptable through circumstance but questions were asked in the Japanese parliament about the issue. The Shinkansen carries the pride of the nation, it is fast, it is reliable, it provides a service to a need and it is throughout its construction a statement of quality. The Shinkansen serves the Japanese people and serves them well.

I make all of these points because I am going to propose that we use the Shinkansen as the ideal benchmark of how things should work in Japan. I would even propose that it provides strong evidence of how things can work in Japan. Let's call it the Shinkansen Test; is it speedy, is it efficient, is it reliable and does it serve the people?

This is the test which I am now going to apply to the Japanese legal system, specifically the management of criminal investigations. Unfortunately I am going to have to be critical as the evidence I have uncovered this past two weeks is quite frightening. Before I explain let us have a sense of balance rather than just fall into the ex-pat trap of prejudice. Japan has 120 million people, it is the third largest global economy and it is, in my opinion, a wonderful place and culture to visit and live amongst. In a human organisation of such numbers and complexity it is unimaginable that everything works perfectly, human beings are not perfect. So the fact that 120 million of them appear to get so many things right has to be weighed in the balance of this critique.

However in the administration of criminal justice Japan would appear to have a severe problem which does not sit well with its proud record of being progressive whilst holding dear tradition. In the U.K. I have been involved in recent years with the issue of miscarriage of justice. On HumanRightsTV you will find the Innocence Network UK channel and testimonies from Paul Blackburn and Susan May together with material on the current cases of Sam Hallam and Simon Hall. Our own justice system has much to be concerned about when viewed through the lens of these cases. All of this work has led me to become involved with a project to bring together exonorees from all around the world at a conference in Cincinatti in April 2011. And that involvement led me to the case of Mr Sugaya, a man released from prison in 2009 after having spent 17.5 years in police cells and prison as a result of a dreadful miscarriage of justice.

Yesterday we visited this quite, small and seemingly gentle man to video his testimony and that of Mrs Nishimaki, an equally seemingly unremarkable woman who appears to have single handedly been the catalyst which saved Sugaya-san from an unjust destiny. We will be posting this dramatic and challenging material on a new HumanRightsTV Japan channel within the next month together with an interview with one of the lawyers instrumental in the case. I will leave a lot of the incredible story we have heard until this work is complete and for now just concentrate on the bare facts of the case as it has been told to us.

Our first meeting was with the lawyer and he revealed an interesting insight into the Japanese management of criminal cases. He expressed the view that once a suspect is arrested a conviction is more than 98% guaranteed. He also questioned the procedure which allows the police 27 days custody from arrest for questioning without any legal representation for the suspect. In this matter of unrepresented custody he was of the strong opinion that Japan lagged behind the world in its administration of criminal justice. The lawyer also noted that this long period of questioning was not the subject of any video recording or audio recording and the methods employed by the police in interrogation remain unscrutinised.

In our interviews yesterday we first met Mrs Nishimaki who diligently took us to the scene of crime and walked us through the terrain of events. She explained how the case involved a 4 year old child who had been abducted, sexually abused, murdered and dumped by a river. She told how the police investigation appeared to take a long time and that initial enquiries focused on known offenders, people who watched child pornography and those around the area at the time.

As the investigation faltered the police began to ask about "suspicious people" requesting that the public report anyone of concern. This is Japan of the early 1990's, this is provincial Japan, this is a place where neighbours know each other and family bonds are strong in a way we probably haven't seen in the UK for a few of generations. Within this social framework Mr Sugaya was suspicious. He seemingly lived alone, he didn't speak to his neighbours and he was only at home at weekends in his small flat where he watched videos.

This reported behaviour was enough to place Sugaya-san on the list of suspects. The suspicion of the police was apparently intensified because a recent child sex offender prosecution had been successful and in that case the accused also had a large video collection. Please note that there was no indication made that any of the material in such a collection was of a criminal nature, the connection is simply that the video collection was large.

As the investigation progressed the police collected human fluid samples from Mr Sugaya's rubbish outside his flat and from that were able to show that he had the same blood group, B positive, as the murderer. This was enough to propel matters to an arrest.

Sugaya-san disclosed the moment of his arrest in the interviews yesterday. He told how police burst into his flat, violently pushed him into the corner and began shouting at him. He said that they had a photograph of the victim which they waved in his face and shouted, "This is the face of the young girl you killed, you killed her so now we are arresting you."

That is some statement to make based on a large video collection and membership of a blood group. The other evidence was that he didn't talk to his neighbours, he lived as a single man alone and he appeared to only be at home at weekends. In addition, police investigations had revealed that his occupation was as a school bus driver for kindergarten children.

Not exactly what anyone would rationally call overwhelming evidence and perhaps that accounts for what happened next. Mr Sugaya was taken to a police station and interrogated for 14 hours non-stop. During this interrogation, according to his testimony, he was screamed at, beaten and dragged around the room by his hair. After those 14 hours he confessed to the crime and provided a detailed script of "what happened".

For an historian context is the grail and if we now look at who Mr Sugaya was before the police arrived maybe we can see why he confessed. Sugaya-san was a middle aged man who was single. He came from a family of no particular wealth who lived in quite a cramped space. He was not a character filled with either education or self-assurance, a rather ordinary little man who was quite and a gentle character. Shy is how he and other people described him. He worked conscientiously at his job in a very Japanese way, following the rules, being punctual, being polite and doing as he was told at all times. His one small luxury was that he was able to maintain a very small flat so at weekends he could escape from the cramped family home and watch videos in peace. Being a shy man, outside of his home and alone he did not have the confidence to speak with his neighbours.

Yesterday he claimed that the police interrogation terrified him to the state where he felt it was only possible to stop the intimidation by confessing. The police had got the man they needed to fit the crime.

At this point I would express the opinion that in the two years I have been working on miscarriage of justice cases I have been shocked to find that in all the cases I know of the police have made the evidence fit a vulnerable accused rather than use evidence to prove a crime. That this appears to be the case in Japan maybe illustrates something about a universality of the psychology of some of those who become police officers. What it certainly does show, and I also understand this from cases I know of in the U.S.A., is that this critique of the Japanese justice system is not their problem alone.

In Mr Sugaya's case even his defence lawyer told him on first meeting that he was guilty! According to Mr Suguaya's testimony the defence lawyer said, "You are now under investigation for three similar crimes so you must have committed one of them at least." When your defence lawyer effectively is working for the prosecution what hope can you possibly entertain. Publicly Sugaya stuck to his confession but privately from day one he was writing to his brother maintaining his innocence.

In this case the role of DNA evidence was pivotal both at trial and ultimately in proving innocence. At the time of his arrest the use of DNA evidence was something only big city forces had started using. The local police force were very keen on this new progressive tool to catch criminals and saw in the Sugaya investigation the possibility of validating the new methodology and thus attaining the funding so they could have such equipment and facilities. Therefore they pressed to substantiate the case with DNA evidence.

The DNA samples were taken from the unfortunate girl's clothing. These items of clothing had been in the river for at least 12 hours before they were recovered. The items, including a blouse and a skirt, had been kept in a police locker for months and had even started to grow mould. At first the regional police applications to a laboratory were turned down, it was the early days of DNA testing and the samples were initially believed to be unsuitable for the procedure. However the eager police persisted and persisted and eventually they talked a laboratory into providing a DNA test and used that to help establish Mr Sugaya's guilt.

Absolutely Innocent
Source: Japan Times

There is much more to this story but I am sure that you can all see how this case illustrates major concerns about the Japanese criminal justice system. If we add to the tale that in the lengthy and time consuming appeal process judge after judge refused to re-examine the DNA samples or physically look at the scene of crime preferring to find the confession to be compelling evidence, then we realise a problem which is deep rooted. Fortunately for Sugaya-san, Mrs Nishimaki stepped in where highly paid legal professionals failed so dramatically.

Nishimaki-san's only connection with the prisoner was that she too was a bus driver for kindergarten children. In a very Japanese way of thinking she found it impossible to reconcile how a person charged with the task of delivering children safely to school could possibly be a child murderer. She wrote to Sugaya and told him that if he did the crime he should apologise to the family of the victim and serve his sentence but if he was actually not guilty he should never give up proclaiming his innocence. Sugaya yesterday revealed how this letter saved his life. When he received it he was at the stage of complete mental collapse and surrender to his fate but the words of this woman breathed a spirit of resistance into him which gave him new found strength.

From that point Mrs Nishimaki set about building a campaign to save Sugaya. She mapped out the scene of the crime in such a way to demonstrate that the original confession was simply an impossible tale. In terms of the location and the terrain the sequence of events in the confession are simply not credible at any number of points and the proposed timeline of the confession was shown to be physically impossible to achieve. Most importantly, through the attention and support she gathered, the DNA tests were repeated and showed clearly that the DNA on the victim's clothes was not that of Mr Sugaya. The campaign pressed home and in 2009 Sugaya was released.

For him, the suffering he has endured has been immense. His father died not long after his arrest due to the shock of the situation. In provincial Japan, even today, to be the father of a child murderer would make it all but impossible to step outside the door of your house just to go shopping. Add to that a media which besieged his family from the onset and crucified their lives in the name of circulation figures and the physical and emotional stress could kill anyone. Sugaya's mother also died whilst he was in prison and besides the life time he lost we have yet to mention the experience of interrogation and imprisonment on a shy vulnerable man.

Hashimoto, a senior police officer in the case, allegedly refuses to accept that Sugaya is innocent even today. If this is true then it has to alarm the Japanese tax payer. If a senior police officer refuses to believe conclusive DNA testing and a pardon in favour of a large video collection and a forced confession then surely questions have to be asked. How can the intellectual capacity such a position represents be suitable for the precious and well paid role of public guardian?

That all of the senior appeal judges who refused to re-examine the evidence or look at the scene of crime claim now they cannot comment on the case as they have now retired also must stretch the patience of the Japanese tax payer. Those retirements rest comfortably on large pensions supplied by the Japanese citizen. Surely that citizen has the right to demand accountability of judges, retired or active, rather than be arrogantly denied due to an erroneous idea that retirement relieves responsibility for duties performed in public office.

Sugaya has asked all of these people for an apology and they have all failed to meet their moral responsibility. If those who created a miscarriage of justice are not prepared to face the consequence of their actions, if they are not going to accept the failings of the system, how then can any Japanese citizen hope for change? Those who do not possess the moral strength for high office should perhaps be considered as unworthy of a lucrative tax payer sponsored pension.

Today Sugaya asks for the simple respect of an apology, in times gone by some of those officials might have been told to wash their necks (non-Japanese readers I am sure will get the import of this euphemism). If the law wishes to preserve a rigid conservative methodology of the past then perhaps its officials should have old traditions applied to their failings!

Certainly there has to be great shame when a very ordinary woman can clearly see a miscarriage of justice but highly paid police, lawyers, judges and courts, supposed experts, refuse to see anything wrong. However, when the citizen in the unassuming shape of Mrs Nishimaki can mount a successful challenge to these proud and supposedly erudite figures of authority then the spirit of Japanese justice will always ultimately be safe.

This is where we can leave this story, more will follow on HumanRightsTV and the forthcoming Japanese channel but before we go I would make two points.

Firstly, I apologise to all good Japanese people if any rudeness on my part is perceived here in my writing. I am a guest in your country and as I have stated see much more right in your culture than I see in error. I would also say that this problem is not exclusively a Japanese issue and whilst the details differ, miscarriage of justice is a cause we should all fight for in this new Age of Transparency.

Secondly, the Shinkansen test! For a nation which is so well known for its innovation and ability to hold onto tradition why should it be impossible to reform the criminal justice system? Legal representation from the moment of arrest and tape recording of all admissible interviews has to be a simple step that would immediately go a long way to protect Japanese justice from the shame of a miscarriage. The rule of law is the basis of all progressive human cultures but transparent justice is the hallmark of civilisation. If we pose the Shinkansen test on the Japanese criminal justice system as exposed by the Sugaya case then does it answer the questions:

1. Is Japanese Criminal Justice speedy?
2. Is Japanese Criminal Justice efficient?
3. Is Japanese Criminal Justice reliable?
4. Does Japanese Criminal Justice serve the people?

If and when Japanese Criminal Justice fails this Shinkansen test then the pride of the Japanese people should lead them to innovate without fear. They should be assured that they can lead the world with justice in just the same way as they lead the world with the Shinkansen.

Iconic Innovation Japanese Style