Statement
2024- : Japan’s “Hostage Justice” System
The year 2025 proved to be a watershed moment for the Japanese criminal justice system.
On September 26, 2024, the Shizuoka District Court handed down a verdict of not guilty in the retrial of Iwao Hakamada, a decision that became final on October 10 of the same year. Though this ruling came far too late—following nearly sixty years of wrongful imprisonment—it effectively served as an indictment of illegal investigative practices, including coerced confessions and the fabrication of evidence by the police and prosecution. Furthermore, the bitter reality that the prosecution stubbornly opposed the retrial, and that the courts consistently rejected initial petitions for decades, was widely condemned as a profound systemic failure.
Moreover, the state-backed frame-up of Ohkawara Kakohki Co., Ltd. revealed the shocking reality of abnormal investigations conducted by the Public Security Bureau and public prosecutors. Tragically, it also brought to light the death of Shizuo Aishima. Despite being diagnosed with an advanced malignant tumor, the court denied him bail, and he passed away in a detention center without receiving adequate medical treatment.
Even after Mr. Aishima's death, the pattern continued with Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, who was arrested over sponsorship contracts for the Tokyo Olympics and is currently standing trial. Despite suffering from a heart condition, his bail was repeatedly denied. Inside the detention facility, he was explicitly told, "You won't leave this place unless you die," forcing him to prepare for the end. Mr. Kadokawa has since filed a state redress lawsuit, seeking accountability for the severe mental anguish inflicted upon him by this "hostage justice" system.
The movement to challenge this system gained further momentum on March 24, 2025, when four individuals—including defendants currently on trial and men whose innocence had been established—filed a joint state redress lawsuit. They asserted that the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure governing detention and bail are unconstitutional. This legal action once again thrust the issue of "hostage justice"—a systemic practice where suspects are denied bail and subjected to prolonged detention until they confess—into the public spotlight.
In both the case of Mr. Aishima, who lost his life in the Ohkawara Kakohki Co., Ltd. incident, and that of Mr. Kadokawa, prosecutors reportedly acted with what can only be described as malice. Aware of the life-threatening conditions of the detainees, they allegedly fed the courts false or inaccurate information specifically to prevent their release. The courts, in turn, accepted the prosecution's assertions without scrutiny and uncritically rejected the applications for bail.
In response to these egregious violations, our association took decisive action on January 13 of this year (2026). Regarding the death of Shizuo Aishima and the prolonged detention of Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, we filed criminal complaints against eight prosecutors and thirty-four judges. The charges included abuse of authority by special public officers (Article 194 of the Penal Code) and violence and cruelty by special public officers (Article 195 of the Penal Code), for their roles in maintaining unreasonable detentions, opposing bail despite deteriorating health, and consistently denying release. We subsequently held a press conference at the Judicial Press Club to announce the filings.
In the Ohkawara Kakohki Co., Ltd. case, the state and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government have already been ordered to pay damages. Yet, hiding behind the veil of their respective organizations, the individual prosecutors and judges—who as human beings possessed the agency to say "No"—have faced absolutely no personal accountability. Their actions constitute a fundamental disregard for human life under the guise of justice, driven by what can arguably be termed willful negligence with a recognition of life-threatening risks. This is nothing less than a modern manifestation of what Hannah Arendt famously called "the banality of evil."
The Ministry of Justice has repeatedly asserted that "there is no such thing as 'hostage justice' in Japan." If that is indeed the case, then we must ask a fundamental question.
If organizational customs and tacit coercion do not exist—if there is no systemic "hostage justice"—then the decisions behind those extraordinarily prolonged detentions, which drove Mr. Aishima to his death and placed Mr. Kadokawa’s life in jeopardy, cannot be blamed on the system. They must instead be viewed as deliberate decisions made by individual prosecutors and judges acting on their own independent professional judgment.
Logically, if there is no coercion from a "system or custom," the ultimate responsibility for those decisions must rest solely on the shoulders of the individual prosecutors and judges themselves. To maintain detention while fully aware of an imminent risk to human life goes far beyond the scope of legitimate judicial discretion; it constitutes a direct act of cruelty.
Consequently, we believe we can, and absolutely must, hold them criminally liable for the consequences of their "personal judgment"—consequences that amount to assault, cruelty akin to torture, and ultimately, injury resulting in death.
If, despite this, individual responsibility cannot be pursued, then the Ministry of Justice must concede the alternative: that Japan suffers from a structural crisis known as "hostage justice," where institutional pressure is so immense that individuals cannot resist it. If that is the truth, the Ministry must genuinely commit to the systemic reforms required to dismantle it.
2017- : The Moritomo Scandal
In 2017, a new and major scandal came to light. It was revealed that in Osaka, a piece of state-owned land had been sold at an extraordinarily low price to a kindergarten with close ties to then-Prime Minister Abe—a school where the Prime Minister’s wife served as honorary principal.
While this act alone constituted an act of corruption unacceptable in a democratic nation, an even more serious issue arose in its aftermath. When questioned about the matter in the National Diet, the Ministry of Finance destroyed and falsified a vast number of official documents to conceal the Prime Minister's wife's involvement in the sale. This led to a tragedy: a Ministry official who was forced to participate in the cover-up committed suicide, unable to bear the burden on his conscience.
Needless to say, keeping accurate records and properly managing official documents form the bedrock of democracy; their arbitrary destruction or falsification must never be tolerated.
Recognizing the gravity of this issue, we identified the Ministry of Finance officials involved in the cover-up and filed a criminal complaint against them for the destruction of public documents, as well as the creation and uttering of forged official documents. Numerous other civic groups and individuals also filed criminal complaints for offenses such as breach of trust.
Yet, astonishingly, the prosecution dismissed every single case, issuing a blanket decision not to indict. The subsequent response of the Prosecutorial Review Commission was equally baffling, with its disclosures heavily redacted in black ink, extending even to the method used to select the panel members.
Since then, a troubling pattern has emerged in Japan: violations of the Political Funds Control Act, infractions of the Public Offices Election Act, and bribery cases involving the ruling party—particularly politicians close to the Prime Minister—have consistently resulted in non-indictment.
Furthermore, through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises, the handling of public records has deteriorated to an unbelievable degree. The destruction and falsification of official documents, or the outright failure to create them for critical decisions, have become normalized. This situation can only be described as a crisis of democracy.
2011–2013: The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office Evidence Fabrication Scandal
This case unfolded through a highly disturbing and anomalous sequence of events.
Initially, television networks repeatedly broadcast a video purportedly showing a secretary to Ichiro Ozawa—a prominent and influential statesman—receiving "a paper bag filled with cash." Armed with this narrative, prosecutors sought to arrest Ozawa on bribery charges, while the mass media fueled daily coverage framing his guilt as a foregone conclusion under the banner of "politics and money."
However, the testimony of the corporation alleged to have provided the bribe was riddled with contradictions, raising heavy suspicions of an illicit plea bargain. Furthermore, because there was absolutely no concrete evidence outside of this corporate testimony, the Special Investigation Squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office was forced to temporarily abandon its plans for indictment.
Undeterred, the Special Investigation Squad shifted its strategy. They attempted to arrest Ozawa and his secretary for alleged violations of the Political Funds Control Act, citing a mere typographical error regarding a date on financial documents. Under normal circumstances, such an administrative oversight would be resolved by a simple correction. Levying an arrest under the Political Funds Control Act for this reason was widely viewed as extraordinary and disproportionate. Once again, lacking any concrete evidence of malicious or willful intent, the prosecution was forced to back down from filing charges.
Immediately following this second failure, however, a citizen group with no discernible history of actual activity filed a petition with the Prosecutorial Review Commission. This commission consists of randomly selected citizens who review cases dropped by public prosecutors, possessing the authority to mandate a criminal indictment by majority vote. Through this specific mechanism, Mr. Ozawa was forcibly indicted.
It is critical to contextualize these events: barely five months prior to the historic 2009 general election—which ended the decades-long hegemony of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and brought the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to power—the prosecution launched this highly irregular investigation into Ozawa, who was then the Secretary-General of the DPJ and the presumptive incoming Prime Minister. This timing makes it impossible to view their actions as anything other than the weaponization of prosecutorial authority to suppress a specific political opponent.
The core question remains: how did a case that the Special Investigation Squad failed to prosecute, even after exhausting its full investigative resources, result in a mandatory indictment by the Prosecutorial Review Commission? In a nation where the LDP had maintained virtually uninterrupted rule for over half a century since World War II, the timing of this intervention—precisely when a historic transfer of power was occurring—sparked intense skepticism. Accusations emerged that the designated attorneys appointed to provide neutral legal counsel to the citizen panel had flagrantly manipulated and guided the jury toward indictment.
The subsequent trial of Mr. Ozawa brought a stunning reality to light. It was revealed that the Special Investigation Squad had submitted entirely fabricated investigative reports to the Prosecutorial Review Commission, deliberately deceiving the citizens to induce a mandatory indictment. In response, our collective filed a formal criminal complaint against Prosecutor Masahiro Tashiro, the author of the fraudulent report, and his superiors, charging them with the Fabrication and Uttering of False Official Documents and the Concealment of a Criminal.
On April 26, 2012, Mr. Ozawa was acquitted. In the verdict, Presiding Judge Daizen issued a scathing critique of the prosecution and demanded accountability, stating:
"It is completely unacceptable for a prosecutor to interrogate a vital individual, who is highly likely to testify at trial, using methods that cast doubt on the voluntariness of the statement, draft a deposition based on that interrogation, compose an investigative report containing factual falsehoods regarding the nature of the interrogation, and subsequently transmit these documents to the Prosecutorial Review Commission."
"A prosecutor must never mislead the judgment of the Prosecutorial Review Commission by conducting interrogations through coercive or doubtful means, drafting false reports, and submitting them. The evidence examined in this trial strongly suggests that the Special Investigation Squad had predetermined a specific narrative for the case, and the interrogating prosecutor focused heavily on extracting statements that conformed to that narrative. This underlying investigative culture likely bred the current situation. However, in light of the proceedings of this trial, it is imperative that the Public Prosecutors Office and relevant authorities thoroughly investigate the precise circumstances and root causes behind the creation of these falsified investigative reports, and take appropriate action."
In defense, the prosecution argued that the stark discrepancies between the actual interrogation and the written report were merely a product of "misunderstandings" or "lapses in memory." Shortly thereafter, however, our collective received an anonymous delivery via a Russian server containing seven internal investigative reports and the actual audio recordings of the interrogations used as trial evidence. Although the Japanese Code of Criminal Procedure strictly prohibits the unauthorized use of criminal trial evidence for outside purposes, the content was staggering. The reports drafted by Prosecutor Masahiro Tashiro were unequivocally not the result of innocent oversight or memory lapses; they were malicious, calculated fabrications.
The audio recordings revealed that while the actual interrogation consisted of nothing more than casual small talk, Tashiro’s official report depicted a dramatic, fraudulent scene claiming Ozawa’s secretary had "broken down in tears and confessed." Furthermore, the leaked materials conclusively proved that several high-ranking superiors, including the Chief and Deputy Chief of the Tokyo District Special Investigation Squad, had actively participated in this conspiracy.
Believing that this profound breach of justice could not be ignored, our collective published the entirety of these leaked materials online on May 3. Within the day, insiders confirmed the authenticity of the documents. Armed with proof that Tashiro’s report was not an isolated rogue act but a systemic crime, our collective filed criminal complaints against his superiors—including Tatsuya Sakuma (former Chief of the Special Investigation Squad), Masayoshi Kimura (former Lead Prosecutor), and Takahiro Saito (Deputy Chief of the Special Investigation Squad)—as co-conspirators in the fabrication and uttering of false official documents. Additionally, we filed criminal complaints against six top-ranking officials of the time, including the Prosecutor General, the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office, the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, for their roles in concealing the crime.
During this period, the Minister of Justice, Toshio Ogawa, was abruptly dismissed from his post. It was later revealed that his dismissal occurred immediately after he reviewed the documents published by our collective, recognized the egregious nature of the scandal, and consulted the Prime Minister about invoking his constitutional authority of prosecutorial command (Shiki-ken) to intervene.
The scandal became a litmus test for whether the prosecution could purge its own internal corruption. Ultimately, the institution failed to reform itself, dropping all charges and refusing to indict any of the officials involved.
Our collective subsequently appealed these non-indictment decisions to the Prosecutorial Review Commission, but the appeal resulted only in a toothless verdict of "unjust non-indictment." This designation merely requires the prosecution to conduct a superficial re-investigation, with no legal mechanism to force an actual trial.
Crucially, the dynamics of this specific review panel stood in stark, suspicious contrast to the panel that had indicted Mr. Ozawa. The designated attorney tasked with providing neutral legal advice to the citizens was, highly inappropriately, a former high-ranking prosector. Exploiting a loophole in the system—where half of the 11-member citizen panel rotates out every three months—this attorney dragged the review out for an unprecedented nine months. Evidence suggests that every time the panel neared a vote to mandate an indictment, the proceedings were deliberately stalled until the jury cycled out, allowing the attorney to systematically manipulate the incoming citizens.
Following these events, the DPJ collapsed, and the LDP returned to power under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. From this point onward, a pattern emerged: cases that threatened the interests of either the public prosecution or Prime Minister Abe were systematically dropped without indictment, and no mandatory indictments were ever produced by the Prosecutorial Review Commission due to the institutionalized use of the "nine-month delay" tactic. Hiromu Kurokawa, who served as the Director-General of the Minister's Secretariat during the Tokyo fabrication scandal and reportedly spearheaded the non-indictment decisions, went on to shield the Abe administration from the Moritomo Gakuen corruption scandal by ensuring all suspects were cleared. He became known as the "Guardian Deity" of the Abe Cabinet. Prime Minister Abe later faced severe public backlash for attempting to unconstitutionally extend the mandatory retirement age specifically to install Kurokawa as Prosecutor General. Amidst this national controversy and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurokawa was forced to resign after journalists exposed that he had been engaging in illegal high-stakes mahjong gambling with reporters. Despite gambling being a criminal offense in Japan, he was never indicted.
2010–2011: The Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office Evidence Tampering Scandal
In 2010, the city of Osaka became the epicenter of one of the most egregious scandals in the history of Japanese jurisprudence.
Atsuko Muraki, a top-ranking bureaucrat within the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, was arrested and indicted on charges of issuing a fraudulent official certificate. She was subjected to prolonged detention lasting 164 days. However, on September 10, 2010, the Osaka District Court declared Ms. Muraki completely innocent.
Shortly thereafter, on September 21, the Asahi Shimbun published a front-page exposé revealing that critical evidence in the case had been intentionally altered by the prosecution. That very day, Tsunehiko Maeda, the lead prosecutor of the Special Investigation Squad of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, was arrested for destroying evidence. Indicted on October 11 of that year, Maeda was sentenced to one year and six months in prison without suspension on April 12, 2011.
The core criminal fact established by the court was staggering: on July 13, 2009, inside the offices of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, Maeda had intentionally altered the digital "last modified" timestamp of a document file on a floppy disk. This disk contained definitive proof of Ms. Muraki’s innocence; Maeda altered the metadata to forge a digital timeline that would falsely frame her as guilty.
Public outrage over this revelation was unprecedented, paralyzing the Public Prosecutors Office with a non-stop barrage of protest phone calls. On October 1, two of Maeda’s direct superiors were arrested for the concealment of a criminal, having known about Maeda's tampering yet actively shielding him from arrest. Although both superiors maintained their innocence, they were indicted and ultimately found guilty.
Our collective, however, strongly maintained that the matter could not be considered resolved by these arrests alone.
Legally, the crime of "destruction of evidence" implies destroying or altering proof to protect a criminal. What Prosecutor Maeda did was the exact opposite: fully aware that Ms. Muraki was completely innocent, he deliberately tampered with the definitive proof of her innocence to secure a fraudulent conviction. The malice and systemic threat of this act are incomparably worse than simple evidence destruction.
We asserted that this crime must be prosecuted under the charge of Abuse of Authority by Special Public Officers (Tokubetsu Komuin Shikken Ran'yo-zai). Furthermore, the fact that this investigation had been officially approved through the formal chain of command all the way up to the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office demonstrates that Prosecutor Maeda was not a "rogue actor" running amok; he was operating within a framework approved by his superiors.
Therefore, our objective in filing a criminal complaint was to prevent the prosecution from executing a "lizard’s tail cutting" strategy—scapegoating only Maeda and his immediate superiors to protect the institution. By demanding a comprehensive re-investigation, we sought to ensure that the entire chain of command, spanning the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, the Osaka High Public Prosecutors Office, and the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office, would be subjected to criminal scrutiny.
It is worth noting that filing a criminal complaint against public prosecutors for crimes committed during an active investigation was entirely unprecedented in modern Japanese history. While numerous legal scholars and experts pointed out the gravity of the issue, the legal community was initially hesitant to take concrete action toward criminal prosecution.
Under those stagnant circumstances, a formal criminal complaint was drafted by a group of legal professionals who chose to remain anonymous, and ordinary citizens recruited via the internet stepped forward to act as the official complainants. We must emphasize the historical significance of this unique, grassroots initiative. Though conceived as a one-time emergency measure, this collective action delivered a profound shock to the Japanese judicial establishment, laying the groundwork for a series of civic movements that would continue to challenge the systemic corruption of our justice system.
Nobuyo Yagi
Representative
Kenzenna Hochikkoka no Tame ni Koe o Ageru Shimin no Kai
(Citizen's Collective for a Sound Rule of Law)
Contact:
E-Mail :shiminnokai21@gmail.com
X : @shiminnokai21 (Japanese, English, Spanish available)