Japan has quite a weird judicial system. I think from a western, common law eye, it probably seems worse. In the west a prosecutor will usually bring a case if

Japan has quite a weird judicial system. I think from a western, common law eye, it probably seems worse. In the west a prosecutor will usually bring a case if they think there is a reasonable chance of getting a conviction whereas in Japan, a prosecutor will only bring a case if they are very convinced that there will be a conviction. I think there is also some societal pressure on judges to not find people innocent, which seems pretty bad to me. Also the police basically want to extract signed confessions out of people and may often keep suspects in custody for long periods of time (without access to a lawyer or anyone else) to extract confessions. Obviously this sounds bad so in the interest of balance, let me point out that there are many problems with the US system but they are out of this comment.