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Getting arrested in Japan
- tardedmeme 5mo ago[flagged]
- Onavo 5mo agoThey are hardly an exception in that region, it's always been that way.
- dakolli 5mo ago[flagged]
- burgerone 5mo agoWe're just going to call more and more things faschist until the word has lost all its meaning
- tekla 5mo agoIt's already lost all meaning.
- wetpaws 5mo ago[dead]
- gruez 5mo agoAt this point it's just a synonym for "type of authoritarianism I don't like".
- dakolli 5mo ago[flagged]
- Avicebron 5mo agoWanting to feel safe walking around the city because you know the homeless aren't going to attack you or otherwise be psychotic at you is evil?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tardedmeme 5mo agoWhat would non-fascist authoritarianism be?
- dakolli 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoNationalistic flamebait is not allowed here, regardless of which country you have a problem with, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- eowln 5mo ago[flagged]
- xyzelement 5mo ago[flagged]
- c-c-c-c-c 5mo agoThere’s loads of drugs in tokyo and ample opportunities to get robbed or beaten up every day of the week and the police doesn’t give one crap as long as they only target foreigners. Fucked up country I wish for the people to be free one day from their current fascist leaders.
- ToValueFunfetti 5mo agoI guess putting innocent people in miserable conditions for extended periods doesn't count as tolerating badness, technically.
- niek_pas 5mo agoAnd I’m sure the boundary on what constitutes ‘badness’ is something everyone can agree on!
- ktallett 5mo agoDo you mean it's not tolerated as long as you ignore the following? -The rampant sexual assaults -Child pornography still be prevelant -Tens of Millions overworked -Millions paid a wage that can't provide anything other than a slave life -The latter two leading to extreme levels of suicide -The fact the society as a whole isolates difference whether it be disability, or personality -OAPs needing to commit crime to live or committing crime to go to prison -There not being enough social care -The rampant racism against anyone else Need I go on? If you think the above is wonderful something is seriously wrong. Japan has as many flaws as any where else and is the reason for many of them themselves.
- HPMOR 5mo agoHoly shit this is horrible. It really shows the true cost of having a disciplined public society. People love to hate on SF, and the homelessness. But I think it’s a society that prioritizes individual freedom which allows for both this outcome and the entrepreneurial environment we see.
- xyzelement 5mo agoYou are not supposed to be in jail, and you are not supposed to enjoy it if you are. It makes sense to optimize society for law obiding people.
- HPMOR 5mo agoSorry, I think you mean abiding*. But laws are not some moral edicts handed down by god. They can and often are wrong or seriously misguided. Laws can and should be broken if and only if the agent at hand has a thorough understanding of why they are violating the law. Breaking a law and antisocial behavior are not necessarily equivalent.
- disillusioned 5mo agoRight, but there's a core conceit we use in the US (mostly) that you are innocent until you are proven guilty, and if you are wrongfully accused (as was evidently the case from the author), you should perhaps NOT be put into such a grim set of living conditions with essentially no rights. In this case, the author evidently _was_ a law abiding person, so the optimization failed, senselessly, likely out of a systemic effort to strike enough fear in the populace to over-index towards avoiding the possibility of this sort of situation. (Much like Singapore caning people for minor offenses.) Whether or not you agree that such draconian punishments or processes are effective or fair is a different discussion, but this person was LITERALLY not supposed to be in jail, so how fair is it that they were removed from polite society for over a month in such poor conditions and at considerable expense?
- blargey 5mo ago> You are not supposed to be in jail Especially If you’re wrongfully arrested. “Optimizing society for law abiding people” means the opposite of what you think it means.
- metalcrow 5mo agoThis sounds bad enough that it makes me wonder what the punishment for breaking the rules in jail is. If you can't sleep in a certain direction, what are they going to do if you refuse to obey? Or even can't obey because you don't speak Japanese?
- c-c-c-c-c 5mo ago[flagged]
- sodafountan 5mo agoBreaking rules in US prisons leads to solitary confinement. I'm assuming there's something similar in Japanese prisons, although the conditions sound like they can't get much worse... I can't logically think of any other lawfully worse punishment than what was described in the article. I don't know what they'd do for breaking rules in these situations, to be honest.
- kelnos 5mo agoWell, the not sleeping thing is easy: they can simply scream at you, on end, for as long as they want. You're not going to get much sleep that way.
- laurieg 5mo agoAccording to amnesty international [0] you'd be put in solitary confinement and restrained with your hands handcuffed to a belt. From the report "Handcuffs are not removed at any time, even during mealtimes, or when the prisoner needs to sleep or use the toilet." [0] https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/asa220041998en.pdf https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/asa220...
- ktallett 5mo agoThere is nothing about Japan that suggests otherwise. One example being whether you agree with capital punishment or not, their method of never giving you advance notice is torture, for both the prisoner and their family.
- commandersaki 5mo agoSomething as small as getting into a heated argument in public, accidentally taking an item you didn’t pay for, overstaying a visa, or even grabbing someone else’s umbrella or bike thinking it was yours can escalate further than you could imagine and have you arrested before you’ve even had a chance to explain. Is this actually true or just fearmongering? I mean really, no chance to explain? Sounds as dumb as being forced into a psychiatric ward for wearing a pink shirt.
- iamnothere 5mo ago> grabbing someone else’s umbrella Absolutely hilarious if you have any knowledge of Japan. Your umbrella is the one thing that is absolutely not safe if you leave it unattended. Japanese will joke about this. This really calls the whole article into question.
- Klonoar 5mo agoThe article is vastly overstating some of that stuff. I used to live there. It’s also amusing to me that anything Japan related winds up on the front page of HN, but a similar article for a different country would probably go un-voted.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- csa 5mo ago> Is this actually true or just fearmongering? Mostly fear mongering or law breaking that is commonly punished throughout the world. In order: - nonsense, unless heated argument includes assault or disturbing the peace - stealing… yes, it’s a crime. Usually handled with an apology and repayment if charges are brought. Completely overlooked if it was an actual one-off accident. - overstaying visa - also a crime. Self-reporting to an immigration office will usually lead to a light punishment of “return home and 1-year re-entry ban”. People who live in Japan on tourist visas and do short visa runs are scrutinized carefully. - grabbing umbrella or bike - fear mongering. This happens all the time. If it comes to a head, just apologize. I will say that there is a bit of an art to umbrellas and bikes — either embrace the musical chairs, or take actions such that it is less likely to happen to you.
- metacritic12 5mo agoSeems like it's not pleasant, and the author says in theory it could be as low of a bar as getting into a heated argument; but the author never discloses his actual charge, which I think is critical context. If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different than if he had a loud but normal argument you might see in any big box store in the US. That he doesn't go on to protest why he got locked up makes me think it was something more serious. Some time ago (can't easily find it anymore) there was a expose on UK prisons, which was interesting without even knowing what crime the prisoner was convicted of, but turns out it was abuse of a relative.
- actionfromafar 5mo agoArrested not convicted.
- amarant 5mo agoJapan has a conviction rate of 99.8%. arrested and convicted is pretty much the same thing over there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
- actionfromafar 5mo agoAnd your point is?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- applfanboysbgon 5mo agoIt's actually not. You can be arrested and then released without charges, which is not a conviction but does not factor into the conviction rate statistic.
- glenstein 5mo agoI was going to say the same thing. OP in this case would not count toward either percentage, what you have to wonder is how many people get charges dropped who get put through the ringer. It also makes the act of accusing incredibly powerful, and you have to wonder what threshold there is and whose accusations matter, because this severe punishment for dropped charges feels extremely powerful.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo ago[flagged]
- infotainment 5mo ago> The arrogance of American tourists is truly boundless. How dare Japanese people not speak English! Who do they think they are? This attitude is so unbelievably prevalent among native English speakers. "Obviously everyone should speak *my* language -- why should I ever have to learn another one?"
- perching_aix 5mo agoOne would think "not being able to speak anything but Japanese" would be a problem for anyone not speaking Japanese, not just English speakers specifically, so this framing is more than a bit ironic, don't you think? Seriously, what is so baffling about expecting an interpreter to be provided? Even if you do "speak" the language, this is not some everyday environment, and evidently not a good-faith one either. If I got into a similar situation in the US or similar, you can be sure as shit I'd ask for one too, even though I do believe I have a reasonable command over the English language in general.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo agoAn interpreter is in fact provided for important communications, but it's a given that there's not going to be interpreters on-hand for every foreign prisoner 24/7. I think most people would simply accept that a language barrier is a normal fact of life of being arrested in a foreign country. The expectation of not needing to speak a foreign language in a foreign country seems to be a uniquely English one, and it manifests in other ways. There are many people who come to Japan to teach English without understanding a word of Japanese, and then complain about the difficulty of life, how restaraunt staff won't speak English or provide an English menu for them, how this and that are not provided for in English. They don't attempt to learn Japanese even after teaching for 5+ years, and yet criticise Japan for not catering to their needs. The sense of entitlement gets nauseating after you've witnessed it enough.
- zuzululu 5mo ago[flagged]
- samrus 5mo agoIts all good until you get arrested for something you didnt do. Then you'll see
- zuzululu 5mo agoare you speaking from experience ?
- dang 5mo agoI agree that that comment was bad and I've asked the commenter not to post like that. But can you please also not take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ProjectVader 5mo agoFor those interested, here is the YouTube channel of the author. She has several videos about her experience. I used to watch her channel, and after reading this article (although she never mentions her name), I clicked through a few more of her posts, and saw her photo and immediately recognized the name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=175yRhSaNfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=175yRhSaNfU
- VincePlatt 5mo agoThe reasons for her detection appear really unfair and specious to put it nicely: https://youtu.be/Q2epTf2IW1g?si=ipy4m3rgFDw3b3cD https://youtu.be/Q2epTf2IW1g?si=ipy4m3rgFDw3b3cD
- commandersaki 5mo agoBefore that timestamp she says there was an email that was asking for more information about the matter but she didn't have the information at hand or couldn't give it so she disregarded the email. That appears to be the impetus for deeming her a flight risk. I'm indifferent to whether or not that makes sense.
- wizzwizz4 5mo agoThe picture in section "THE CELL" does not match the description.
- DarkmSparks 5mo agoWhole new level of respect for the Yakuza, no wonder they end up running everything there.
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoTl;dr: you are in effectively the hole (but stricter) for anything between 1 day and months, without charges. It is torture. As in actual torture. Fact check... anyone can confirm this treatment is standard in Japan?
- jesterson 5mo agoPretty standard.
- aloisklink 5mo agoYou can try looking at this manga posted by a Japanese person that was detained for marijuana possession https://xcancel.com/kime_neko/status/1634511023167381504 https://xcancel.com/kime_neko/status/1634511023167381504. It's in Japanese, but you can use a machine translator and/or look at the drawings. The facilities and food look slightly better (maybe because it's a detention centre in Tokyo), but it mostly matches. Although the mangaka seemed to have a much more positive outlook on it, probably because they could read all the Japanese books they wanted and speak to their cellmates in Japanese.
- zulux 5mo agoPro Tip: When visiting Japan, dress and comport yourself so you don't look like you should be thrown in jail, and it will happen a lot less often. As a Mexican friend puts it for Mexico: Dress as the police should believe you.
- samrus 5mo agoOr dont go to an authoritarian state where something like this is accepted. Im astounded at people defending this. If it was china people would see this is messed up
- g-b-r 5mo agoI wonder if that's possible in Japan for a black person
- eowln 5mo ago[flagged]
- g-b-r 5mo ago[flagged]
- perching_aix 5mo agoI'd assume so, though I'm not aware of any statistics that'd catalogue police action there by skin color / ethnicity, not official, not third party. I'd think a formal or business casual attire, with proper grooming, is a rather international signal that you're vaguely alright in your ways. Anything specific you reckon otherwise for?
- kelnos 5mo agoThe author of the article is a black woman, so... maybe not.
- kstenerud 5mo agoThe Japanese like Africans, placing them only slightly lower than Europeans. Basically if you're not dressed like a thug and don't have certain tattoos, and aren't Brazilian, Korean or Chinese, you'll usually be treated pretty nicely.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoWear a body camera while in public, one that is always recording. It won't save you from absurd prescription drug charges though.
- perching_aix 5mo agoRelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance For those somehow actually considering this: make sure to check local laws, might be super illegal or at least inadmissible, (im)morality nonwithstanding. Although just because it's illegal, inadmissible, or immoral, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it of course. Also maybe don't use the Meta glasses for this, even if you do decide to go for it. Not so sous anymore if you do.
- snvzz 5mo ago>Wear a body camera while in public, one that is always recording. You simply cannot film or take pictures of people in public without consent. Doing this is a crime in Japan. You are thus advocating for people to commit crimes in Japan. Terrible advice.
- g-b-r 5mo agoI mostly love Japan, but this is it, I can't risk something like this. The conviction rate was already terrifying, but this probably nails the coffin. And this in a country where the yakuza is a sanctioned part of the society?
- Rendello 5mo agoThe Yakuza seems to have a similar story as the American Mafia. Both have long histories, are favourite subjects of films and media, and both had a decline that sharpened in the 90s. A large part of that has been increasingly tight anti-Yakuza laws and ordinances. The whole "Law enforcement and indirect enforcement" section on Wikipedia is an interesting read, I linked part of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Current_situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Current_situation I do agree with the justice/prison system being incredibly scary, though!
- aftbit 5mo agoAbsolutely horrifying. I've come to believe that criminal punishment is simply unethical. I wish someone would come up with a better option.
- TacticalCoder 5mo agoAnd what do you have to say to teenage girls or even little kid girls getting raped? Being laxist towards criminals is not just being cruel to the victims to me: to me it is downright complicity with the criminals. BTW: Japan happens to be one of the safest country on earth. A friend who's a pilot told me: "Tokyo is the only city in the world where I've women from my team (mostly air hostesses but also female pilot or co-pilot) go for a run at 3am". Now he didn't fly to every city in the world but I can name a great many cities where a fit woman won't go joking in yoga pants at 3am. And so can he.
- kulahan 5mo agoJapan's judicial system has something like a 99% conviction rate. It's "safe" because they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people in the process. So everyone is naturally going to be on their best behavior.
- tristanj 5mo agoThe claim that Japan is "safe" because it has a high conviction rate is a junk meme. The United States federal conviction rate is essentially identical to the Japanese judicial conviction rate when measured by the same methodology. It's roughly 99.6-99.8% depending on the year. Japan is safe because of other factors, not their conviction rate. > they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people And this is completely baseless.
- iamnothere 5mo agoExactly. What is it with the weird attacks on Japan here? Chinese sockpuppet accounts maybe?
- bouncycastle 5mo agoanother thing in Japan is that you can get arrested for self defence. Say if someone starts attacking you on the street, and eg. you punch back causing an injury, when you could have simply ran away and escaped, then you can get arrested and held for 23 days as a suspect. So say if someone shoves you on a subway in Tokyo, do not ever shove back or do anything worse. Move away, get witnesses / evidence if you can, then report. (I've also witnessed an attacker try to exploit this rule, where they would intentionally injure themselves during the conflict and then claim that the defendant did it, so be aware of that) Oh, and other things that can get you arrested: - Not promptly returning someone's lost property such as a wallet. There was a case here in the newspapers recently. - A review about a business that damaged their reputation, even if it was true (but you don't have 100% evidence). eg. "I got food poisoning from here". Be very careful what you post and say online as defamation laws are very different. oh, and maybe not arrested, but get in trouble for: if you place your household rubbish into not your designated collection point, even though the point is the closest to your home. (Also don't get me started on the topic of sorting trash...)
- gyf304 5mo agoThat’s a thing as well in some US states called duty to retreat.
- bouncycastle 5mo agoSimilar, but not the same. Japan is more strict. There is also no Castle Doctrine, so you have to retreat even if you are in your home.
- AngryData 5mo agoThis guy has a way rosier view of the US justice system than either I or anybody I know who has been arrested or sent to jail has.
- momentmaker 5mo agoThis sounds like a monk-styled meditation retreat where one just get fed and can just keep doing meditation all day alone. Sounds a heaven for someone who is ready for it but hell for those whose thoughts run amok.
- PieTime 5mo agoYou getting one hour of sleep is meditating and no going outside?
- nnm 5mo agoSeems like the system is heavily stacked against detainees, regardless of whether they are actually innocent or guilty.
- csa 5mo ago> Seems like the system is heavily stacked against detainees, regardless of whether they are actually innocent or guilty. The vast majority of folks who get detained in Japan either did something particularly obvious (DUI, violence with a weapon, etc.), or they had been warned multiple times about illegal behavior. Sometimes the crime they are busted for seems trivial (e.g., Al Capone and tax evasion in the US), but there are other more serious crimes that they have been involved with or expected to be involved with. I have literally never heard of any innocent person being detained in Japan, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times in the US (esp. for peaceful protesters). That said, I know of many cases in Japan for which very guilty people were given appropriate warnings rather than detention and prosecution, and behavior changed.
- nayuki 5mo agoI enjoyed learning from this video years ago, which introduces the topic of how you are treated when arrested in Japan: * Paolo fromTOKYO - "Why Japan Arrests Foreigners" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo (14m23s) [2019-08-16]
- prokopton 5mo agoIs every video about being arrested in Japan sponsored by SquareSpace?
- Ngraph 5mo agoJapanese, living here. I'd heard 人質司法 (hostage justice) used in news commentary but never really pictured what it looked like inside. 5-day showers, food slid through a slot, sleeping on the floor with lights on. None of that is what most people here imagine when they hear "detention." A lot of us live with this background feeling that "if you get arrested here, you're done" even if you didn't do anything. Part of it is the system. But part of it is also a cultural thing where being suspected at all is somehow seen as your fault. The people around you start treating you differently before any verdict. Whatever the underlying charge actually was, none of this should follow from an arrest before any conviction. You were innocent and they still put you through 35 days. As a Japanese person reading this, I'm just sorry. That shouldn't have happened.
- VincePlatt 5mo agoYou might find her explanation of why she was detained interesting: https://youtu.be/Q2epTf2IW1g?si=ipy4m3rgFDw3b3cD https://youtu.be/Q2epTf2IW1g?si=ipy4m3rgFDw3b3cD
- csa 5mo agoI will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior. I’m guessing either she didn’t understand the warnings, or she didn’t follow their guidance. Simple example, they may have asked her to follow a procedure before leaving the country, and she didn’t because she “thought it was over”. The law enforcement machine in Japan doesn’t like to arrest people. 99% of the time or so, it only arrests when they have an open-and-shut case and/or the person had been warned multiple times. Maybe this has changed in the age of social media influencers, maybe this is different for black people, but Japanese cops have always taken the discrete approach with me and the folks I’ve known (both Japanese and non-Japanese).
- VincePlatt 5mo ago> I will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior. Your theory lines up best with Occam's Razor: it's the more likely and simple theory, and probably true. Even so... what counts as "risky"? And the reason for her detention was having been sent something illegal from the outside. The speculation has been OTC drugs which are legal elsewhere but not in Japan. But what would that have to do with "risky" previous behavior? Granted, she missed responding to an email while she was out of country, but that hardly seems substantive either. Honestly, it seems much more likely that she was targeted because she's visible on social media or because she's black or because she's female; or perhaps she's in some undocumented category of special contempt because she's all of those things. On that note, I checked out her social media and she showed a property remodel and after purchasing property in Japan. It seems to me like that might show the way to others too. What better way to dissuade future immigration by simply randomly detaining folks in categories they don't like? Of course they would never do something so unseemly so as to make laws specifically disallowing blacks, single females, or even just foreigners but then again the pendulum in Japanese politics is swinging towards conservative isolationism again, no? So, it wouldn't be surprising. And if her own testimony on YouTube is to be believed and she isn't omitting anything, then I have little reason to believe any other version of this. All that aside, and to keep this in perspective, I have no doubt that Japanese treatment of prisoners in general and even of foreigners is still by and large very good; but it's still unsettling to hear about how this was handled and about how "hostage justice" is the norm there. It seems beneath like it should be beneath them and it's very surprising to learn this about their system.
- tokkkie 5mo agostealing or overstaying visa is crime everywhere. why surprised about arrest? other countries ignore this? from japan.
- zbentley 5mo agoThe surprise isn't about the arrest. The surprise is about the extremely harsh conditions people are placed in after being arrested--without any proportionality of what they were arrested for, before it is known whether or not they are guilty of the crime that was accused.
- hparadiz 5mo agoRule 34 of internet conversations about justice is that someone will always say "just obey the law" even if the law is the death penalty for walking on the grass.
- bobsmooth 5mo agoTorturing prisoners not even convicted of a crime is something we don't do in America.
- kstenerud 5mo agoWell, not as official policy anyway.
- iamnothere 5mo agoFar too many HN “Japan understanders” receive all their opinions about Japan from US activists who get paid to write hate pieces about Japanese culture. Just look at this thread. Yakuza? Taking umbrellas = go to jail? These people are morons. Worse, they think they are informed. Maybe the BoJ didn’t burn enough money on US bonds this week or something. I can never understand the timing of these things or who is funding them.
- simianparrot 5mo ago
- chmod775 5mo agoThe Ministry for State Security in former East Germany had cells they'd dissappear people into. If you ignore the physical torture they employed in the earlier years, the actual cells themselves were somewhat more comfortable than what the Japanese got. The Stasi had beds, some sense of privacy through proper doors, and an hour a day one might spend outside in a small courtyard to get some sunlight. However the level of psychological torture (sleep deprivation, hours of standing/sitting in a prescribed posture, hourly checks, ...) appears to be milder in Japan. The Stasi could take that pretty far once they weren't allowed to use physical torture anymore.
- mjyut 5mo agoFor those visiting Japan, I'd like to add one important point. It's true that parts of Japan's judicial system are truly "middle age". https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hideaki-ueda-japan-shut-up-video_n_3437187 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hideaki-ueda-japan-shut-up-vi... However, fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), you can't bribe officials. Japan is a society where it's difficult to get special treatment by giving money, not just to officials. If you try to use bribes, you'll only be looked down upon and put in a worse position.
- eviks 5mo agoHow is it fortunate that you can't avoid medieval treatment using mediaeval remedies?
- doix 5mo agoI had to deal with the Japanese for the first time last week. My girlfriends bag was stolen with her passport. It happened in a Round1 (near Umeda in Osaka), we knew exactly when since we sat down to play Mario Kart and after one race it was gone. First the police tried to convince us that we just forgot it somewhere. Eventually we convinced them to check cameras, and they said it was a blind spot. They refused to check entrance and exit cameras. She had her airpods in there, and we could track the location, they refused to look at any cameras in the area (we tried searching the area ourselves but couldn't locate them, we figure the thief chucked it somewhere hard to find). We had the serial numbers of USD that was in the bag, they wouldn't even write it down. Currently still waiting for an official report so that we can try and deal with their immigration to move her visa to another passport. Having spoken to her embassy, it's the second time they've heard the story (same exact Round1, same Mario kart section). And if it's happened twice to citizens from her country, it probably happens more. The whole thing made me completely disillusioned with Japan. Yes, statistically it's extremely safe, but if something does happen, don't expect any help. Reading this story just makes me think I should avoid any interactions with police if at all possible, and I've stopped carrying my passport with me. I rather get fined than having it stolen.
- CalChris 5mo agoThe description of the detention center reminds me of Room 101 in 1984.
- pech0rin 5mo agoI love how this starts out by listing “innocent” laws that you can break. Its your job to know the laws of the country and if you break them you should be punished. US people love visiting Japan and talking about how safe it is. Why exactly do you think its so safe?
- randerson 5mo agoI live in the US and while most of us know about the more serious crimes that often get prosecuted, there is a long tail of crimes that no single person could memorize. Over 60,000 pages of federal laws alone.
- sershe 5mo agoI dunno, I think maybe that is a big part of why these countries are so safe? It is a form of meritocratic classism if you will. You are expected to be a certain kind of (law-abiding among other things) person. If you behave like you might not be the kind of person you get an implicit "social credit" downgrade and are treated like crap end to end. Sure, they might be "overreacting" all things considered, but in the US on the other hand there are examples of clearly dangerous people being catch and released because rights and dignity, until they actually murdered someone. There's a tradeoff, but the Japanese approach appears to be closer to the optimal point.
- ushimitsudoki 5mo ago[dead]
- namjh 5mo agoAs a South Korean I'm lowkey surprised that most reactions posted here is describing the detention experience to be some kind of human rights abuse. Most Koreans debating on Internet demand severe punishment so criminals be afraid of getting jailed. I know this is a very questionable strategy, but afaik this is the most dominant public sentiment over this topic.
- TrackerFF 5mo agoI guess this is strongly tied to the culture of not wanting to "lose face". Not only relevant to Japanese prosecutors, but the system there makes it very easy for people to just confess (legitimate or false) and pay a fine.
- prokopton 5mo agoThe real crime is adding fade ins on scroll for a blog post.
- type0 5mo agoIt's oddly similar to how Stasi detention system worked in East Germany
- rfwhyte 5mo agoWhen I lived in Japan, one of my roommates was a brown American dude of Dominican ancestry. He, like me, was a clean cut, hard working international student attending a well regarded local university. We had for many months on our daily commutes to and from our school seen an abandoned bike sitting in the bottom of a canal / ditch, and we only had 5 bikes between the 7 of us living in the house, so after many months of seeing this discarded, unused bike rotting in a ditch, we decided to rescue it and fix it up so we could use it. A couple of days later, my roommate was riding the bike while Brown in Japan, and a couple of local cops took issue with this I guess, so he was arrested for "Possession of stolen property." He tried to explain at the time that he'd found it in a ditch, but they weren't having any of it and it ended up with all 7 of us who lived in the house getting hauled down to the local police station in handcuffs and questioned for an entire 24 hours all over a junk bike. We were only ever released when someone from our university got involved, and the cops managed to track down the owner of the bike who told them they'd thrown it in the canal because it was broken. The person who chucked their bike into a canal of course faced no consequences whatsoever, but me and my 6 housemates had to endure one of the most harrowing experiences of our lives all because we fished a rotting bike out a ditch and fixed it up. After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.
- snvzz 5mo ago>discarded, unused bike rotting in a ditch Every bike in japan has individual registration or, same thing, a registered owner, as you found out. You stole a bike, when you could have ignored it or reported it as a lost object. There were consequences, which shows the system is working properly. The police were surprisingly kind despite your actual crime, as you did not get the same treatment as the OP.
- nukedindia 5mo ago[dead]