While news in Japan this week has been understandably fixated on the sensational suicide of Agriculture Minister Matsuoka Toshikatsu (and related scandals), as is often the case in this country, another story — somewhat less sensational yet arguably at least as significant — slipped by without much notice. The story was brought up in a blog entry posted last Saturday at the “doko doko” blog of Diet member Nobuto Hosaka of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, the most active member in the House of Representatives (in terms of number of questions raised) and known for being a thorn in the side of the ruling party coalition. Saturday's post concerned a new “citizen judge system” to be introduced in Japan by May 2009, one which would allow, for the first time in Japan's history, a group of six citizen judges (along with 3 professional judges) to preside on cases involving verdicts as serious as the death penalty. (A simulation of the selection process for choosing citizen judges is already being carried out.) To understand the significance of the new citizen judge system, it is useful to review some basic facts about the judicial system in Japan. On paper at least, Japan's judicial system boasts impressive figures, with a staggeringly high 99.8% conviction rate and an 86.6% rate of “full confession by the accused”. And yet, as was recently revealed in the dramatic story of a group of suspects in a vote-buying case, forced, among other things, to shout confessions out a window and stomp on the names of loved ones, these figures hide much more than they actually reveal. Surely one of the most vocal critics of the justice system in Japan has been long-time writer, activist and blogger Arudou Debito. If you are picked up by police in Japan, Debito explains that: You are in for a rough time. There is no writ of Habeas Corpus in Japan, which means Japanese police can hold you for up to 23 days (3 days’ initial interrogation, extendable by 10 days a maximum of twice if a judge approves. Which he will–judges rarely deny public prosecutors the privilege unless a lawyer intervenes.). There have been cases of extraction of information (signed confessions that detainees could not read) through physical and mental duress (beatings, lack of sleep and basic amenities, denial of outside communication, consular contact, or legal counsel) carried out by chain-smoking tag-team interrogators. Detention by the Japanese police is one of the larger nightmares you can experience in Japan. More recently, blogger Pellegrini at Trans-Pacific Radio put together a very detailed overview of the problem of forced confessions in Japan, noting that: Maximum pressure, such as withholding meals, physical coersion, and sleep deprivation, is applied by police and investigators to make sure that a confession is signed. It is worth noting that the justice system enables all of this. Videotapes and recordings are not needed (indeed they’re not allowed!) in the interrogation room; naturally, there are many cases where forced confessions have occurred. It is likely that a significant percentage of those forced confessions are indeed false. The fact that defense lawyers habitually warn investigators against forcing confessions from their clients is evidence both that forced confessions happen and that defense lawyers are allowed little or no participation when interrogations take place. It is only against this backdrop of the chronic problem of forced confessions that Hosaka's blog entry can really be understood.