Japan’s newly elected parliament, set to convene its first session on October 27, should prioritize an inquiry into the country’s deeply troubled criminal justice system.
The urgency was underscored this month when prosecutors dropped their right to appeal the acquittal of 88-year-old Iwao Hakamata. A former boxer, Hakamata spent decades on death row after being forced to confess to the 1966 murder of a family of four — a conviction later overturned in a retrial. His case exposed systemic failures: coerced confessions, prolonged detention, and a retrial process so slow that it took 43 years before his acquittal was confirmed.
Prosecutor General Naomi Unemoto acknowledged on October 8 that her office must review the extraordinary delay in Hakamata’s case. But institutional self-reflection is not enough. The incoming administration of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and the new Diet should open a full inquiry that leads to legislative reform.
Such an inquiry should focus on three urgent issues:
- Forced confessions: Japan’s “hostage justice” system relies heavily on prolonged detention without bail and interrogations without legal counsel, producing coerced confessions through intimidation.
- The death penalty: Japan remains one of the few developed nations to retain capital punishment. Inmates are informed of their executions only hours in advance, a practice that Hakamata endured in fear for 33 years. Abolition is overdue.
- Retrial failures: Hakamata’s decades-long wait for retrial and acquittal shows the urgent need to overhaul retrial laws.
Hakamata’s ordeal illustrates how wrongful convictions and systemic abuse persist under Japan’s current system. Lawmakers now have an opportunity — and responsibility — to enact reforms that safeguard human rights and ensure no one else suffers such injustice again.
