Sheesh. I can’t find a good word for it, since I don’t want to disrespect “shit,” a perfectly respectable word that is now having hard times the last few centuries. FYI Maeda’s arrest is the first arrest that the Supreme Prosecutors Office has ever made on its own, according to a media report.
Silver lining? Gives the lie to big bad conspiracy theories about the Japanese bureaucracy and the public prosecutors. Hey, you take what you can get.
5 comments:
Really, after all previous incidents with coerced confessions and disregarded evidence this isn't really anything new, but just another small nudge along that same slippery slope.
Never get involved with Japanese police or courts, whether as witness or victim, if you can at all avoid it, is the takeaway message I guess.
I don't really understand the point about conspiracy theories regarding the bureaucracy, or perhaps it's just how you phrase things. All bureaucracies have a tendency to protect themselves, and the image in the West of the Japanese prosecutorial system is not very favorable. So what is the silver lining you see? I suspect the Soviet equivalent to the Supreme Prosecutors Office found more than one such case over the years.
Janne: No system is perfect, and I have no doubt that prosecutors and police everywhere lean heavily on their suspects, and that such practices will result in cases of wrongful convictions. That is one reason that I have had to reexamine my support of the death penalty. (I am still conflicted, if you need to know.) And with so many policepersons everywhere, there are bound to be rogues who will conspire to frame innocent individuals, just as there will always be serial killer nurses every once in a while. But for a member of the small, special investigation elite of the elite corps of Japanese public prosecutors to (allegedly) tamper with evidence to fabricate a case (and, as I learned, later, for the special corps to casually dismiss an internal complaint from another prosecutor without investigating) is mindboggling for me.
The takeaway in the event that you do get involved in the Japanese justice system in my mind is to a) stick to the truth if you’re innocent no matter what they say, and b) not say anything if you’re guilty.
Paxy: Really just whistling in the dark.
Okay, there’s the conventional wisdom in certain part of the neck of these woods that the entire bureaucracy is joined together in a vast conspiracy to rule Japan and that the public prosecutors (and the tax authorities) are an integral part of this. Well, the parts are too divided to construct a whole and the nuts and bolts too…nuts?...to provide a wholesome part, with benefits all around.
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