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The first day or two following my arrest in west Tokyo I was in denial and was convinced that I would be imminently released... whatever the naysayers in the exercise yard (read: cubicle) claimed. As the week wore on realization slowly sank in: this was more serious than a slap on the wrist, and this might well turn into a long haul. All the while I was missing appointments and assignments and failing to turn up to work, which as a punctual motherfucker really pained me. In fact it pained me more than the physical discomforts of being in jail. If only I had a phone to call my students and let them know why I missed the lesson (or at least access to a phone).
I had a dream I was crossing Showa Highway under the flyover near my old house at Iriya, just past the motorbike shop district, on the way to my mother and son class at Minowa, and I felt good about being back to normalcy... then I woke up and I remembered I was still in a cell.
Just number 3, among all the other numbered prisoners.
In jail they deliberately treat you like a number, they are always counting you, and they make it tough to do just the simplest things like making a phone call. It is all part of the routine -- instilling discipline. In my case, it wasn't warranted -- I figure I have discipline enough. In any case, even from the outset I was determined to treat my whole Asian jail experience as just an experience, something I could learn from, blog about, and hopefully profit from. I was an undercover reporter, and this was my holiday in Hell. Sixteen days seemed to be the perfect length for it. If they had released me on Day Two I wouldn't have had enough time to make sense of it. Had I been charged and tried and sentenced to one year in prison (the worst case scenairo, as I would later glean from my lawyer), I probably would have come out a totally different person. A harder man, and probably more assertive. As destiny would have it, that wasn't the fate for me.
About a year after my encounter with the Japanese legal system I was lying in bed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, watching TV. There came on an ad for an upcoming Japanese movie called Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai ("I Just Didn't Do It".) I might have been staying in a good hotel room with the air-con on super cold, but instantly I was back in my cell. It was like someone had taken a camcorder into the Kitazawa Police Station, and filmed my daily life. The Internet Movie Database reports: "A young man on his way to a job interview is wrongly accused of groping a high-school girl on the train. He consistently denies the crime. But he is detained by the police and then charged. Most of the film consists of the numerous court sessions, and I found it totally gripping all the way.
"The point of the film is that the Japanese justice system is totally unjust. Astonishingly, 99.9% of defendants are found guilty. In Japan there are no juries - judges make the decisions themselves. (This system is going to change in a few years, so that for serious crimes the verdict is decided by judges and small juries together. But who knows whether this will make the system more just. Many Japanese people might feel a strong pressure to conform with authority and find the defendant guilty even if they don't think they actually are.)
"In the film we get an excellent look at how evil the system is. For a start, in Japan, the police can hold anyone for ten days without charge, and an extra thirteen days (I think) if the public prosecutor agrees. This is a very long time to be held without charge! The police repeatedly tell Teppei that if he confesses then he'll just be able to walk out of the police station - "it's only groping, it's just like a parking offence." But this is coercion and untrue. If he confesses, he can easily be charged and convicted. So the police are not allowed to say this. And in court, under oath, one police officer perjures himself by denying that he ever said it..."
I agree with what the author of this post (ed-25) says about the police coercion. I experienced it myself.
Ichiban: That was his codename at our facility, Number One. It was a well-deserved name because he had stayed here so long (32 days) that he had become a favorite of the guards. A chuugokujin (Chinese man), Ichiban had lived in Japan for about 10 years before his arrest. Tragically, he was on his way back to the Motherland when he was arrested. Ichiban told me that small boats reguarly make the journey between China and Japan, stopping at ports like Niigata, Yokohama and so on to dislodge/pick up illegal immigrants. Ichiban was on his way to one of these ports (Yokohama) when, purely by chance, he was stopped by a cop on the train for an ID check. Bald and with bad breath, Ichiban is no doubt in China right now.
Sanban: Number three, that was me.
Yonban: That's right, everyone has numbers here, not names. Just another example of the dehumanization of jail. Yonban (Number Four) is Thai and has lived in Japan for 17 years. He loves it here. Loves everything about it, the nightlife, the music... heck, the dude even loves enka, which is astounding for a foreigner. The only trouble is, Yonban doesn't have a visa, and he was recently arrested. He doesn't know his fate, but based on my observations to date, this is what will happen to him (I reckon):
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