Category: Current Events

Ayase Death Watch: Three Executed Morning of Aug 23, two at Ayase

tokyo-detention-center.jpg
From Mainichi:

3 death row inmates executed

Three death row inmates were executed at Tokyo and Nagoya detention centers on Thursday, Justice Ministry officials said.

Sources close to the case identified the three as Hifumi Takezawa, 69, and Yoshio Iwamoto, 63, who had been detained at the Tokyo Detention Center, and Kozo Segawa, 60, at the Nagoya Detention Center.

The executions bring the total number of convicts who have been hanged since Justice Minister Jinen Nagase assumed the post in September last year to 10. Death row convicts are executed on orders of the justice minister.

Thursday’s executions reduced the number of death row inmates in Japan to 103. (Mainichi)

Bloomberg has a timely piece covering Japan’s death penalty policy in the context of the soon-to-be-implemented lay judge system. It gives basic background on most of what I wanted to talk about:

The country’s bar association condemned the hanging of three inmates yesterday and called for a moratorium on executions until flaws in the legal system are corrected. To curb abuses, the government plans to team citizen judges with professional jurists to rule on serious criminal cases such as murder and rape.

Under the new system, to be implemented in May 2009, six lay judges chosen at random from voter roles will sit alongside three professionals. Decisions will be determined by majority vote.

“Once lay citizens start participating in trials, the conviction rate will decline,” Tomonao Onizawa, councilor general at the Supreme Court, told reporters earlier this year.

Critics say the proposal, coupled with plans to let crime victims and their families petition for specific punishments, may increase the number of executions.

“Victims will be able to make emotional pleas to the court, with lay judges thrust into a role to hear the most heinous crimes,” said Nobuto Hosaka, secretary general of the Japanese Parliamentarian League Against the Death Penalty. “We feel they will favor the most serious punishment.”

Emotional Rulings

At a June 3 mock trial to test the new system, many audience members wanted the defendant, accused of dangerous driving resulting in death, to receive a longer sentence than the eight years handed down.

“We should feel emotions to some degree in judging, but we shouldn’t let emotions control the ruling,” said Kyoko Hamada, a 48-year-old homemaker from Matsudo city, northeast of Tokyo.

Similar systems are used in some European countries, including Germany and Norway. The use of lay judges “assures a more open and transparent process,” according to Norwegian Public Prosecutor Linda Myrdal.

Instead of the proposed changes, the Justice Ministry should curb abuses that occur in police cells, where suspects may be interrogated for as long as 23 days, Menda said.

`Beatings, Intimidation’

Police tactics include “beatings, intimidation, sleep deprivation, questioning from early morning until late at night and making the suspect stand or sit in a fixed position,” Amnesty International said in a July 2006 report.

The cells are “a breeding ground for further violations” and drive the high conviction rate because “forced confessions” are rarely ruled inadmissible, Amnesty International said in a July 2006 report.

Menda said he confessed to killing a priest and his wife in 1949 after three weeks without enough food, water or sleep. He was released in 1983 after a retrial found he had been convicted with fabricated testimony and his alibi hadn’t been considered.

At the end of July, there were 105 people on death row who had exhausted all appeals. Almost all were convicted of multiple murders, or murder with another serious crime such as rape or robbery. The most notorious is Shoko Asahara, founder of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that killed 12 people in the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway.

Public Support

Ten people have been executed since Justice Minister Jinen Nagase took office in October. His predecessor, Seiken Sugiura, refused to sign execution orders during his 11-month term.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations said systemic flaws uncovered during the appeals that led to the release of Menda and three other death-row inmates in the 1980s haven’t been fixed.

“The danger that mistaken death sentences will be handed down still exists,” the federation said on its Web site.

The government says public support for capital punishment justifies its use. In the most recent survey by the Cabinet Office, 81 percent of 2,048 registered voters contacted by phone supported the death penalty in “unavoidable circumstances,” while 6 percent wanted it abolished. The UN says public backing is misleading because of the secrecy surrounding these cases. The Justice Ministry didn’t identify the inmates executed yesterday. Their names were reported by Kyodo News, citing “informed sources.”

“There is an obvious inconsistency when a state invokes public opinion on the one hand, while on the other hand deliberately withholding relevant information on the use of the death penalty from the public,” the UN Commission on Human Rights said in a March 2006 report.

The government doesn’t inform inmates or their families about execution dates to prevent unnecessary “mental anguish,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its Web site. Critics say the policy is inhumane and designed to suppress protests. For death-row inmates, it means each knock on the cell door may be the call to execution.

“Nothing has changed since the time I was arrested,” Menda said.

No time to outline my thoughts now, but I just want to say that Japan’s death penalty system makes me sick to my stomach, and not just because the prisoners are killed right near my house. It is really scary that the final decision of when and if these prisoners die lies solely in the hands of a political appointee (usually an elected official but not necessarily) who goes through no official vetting process, and on top of that no prior warning is given to the public, victims, or the convict or his or her family. You can debate the morality of killing criminals or the particulars of the legal process, but this absolute bare minimum of human dignity and open government could be easily rectified.

Some people are just dicks in any country

I am generally quite careful not to post anything work related on here, but this particular quote from an internal corporate employee survey I’m translating was just too choice, and utterly anonymous and unidentifiable.

I am opposed to foreigners in the front office. Since it is difficult to convey minor nuances of Japanese within the company it must be even more difficult for customers to understand when conversing with them. I have received two whole claims about this.  (One claim said they could not understand what they were saying, and the other said, a foreigner huh? A Japanese would be better.)

For contrast, here is an excerpt from a customer survey from some rich asshole country club in the US that was forwarded to me a few weeks ago.

I am personally upset about the use of the Mexican labor on the golf
course. I understand you have contracted, and it is the contractors
who are responsible for hiring, but the club is responsible for hiring
the contractor. We get letters about “responsibility” and “right and
wrong,” well, I think the club management had better look at itself.
If all these workers are legal, then I will apologize, but I very much
doubt they are legal. This is a very poor example of judgment and
sends the wrong message. I know I am not the only one that thinks like
this, and if my concerns are unfounded, then the club should issue an
explanation and correct the image.

It’s well worth remembering that there is a certain extent of xenophobia in any country, and I believe that suffering from it firsthand when traveling or living abroad-such as the minor (or major in some unfortunate cases) annoyances that many of us have experiences in places like Japan-is actually a rather good learning experience, which can make one more sensitive to despicable attitudes back home that one may have overlooked before.

Steven Seagal blames FBI for loss of career

You may know that Adam is a huge Steven Seagal fan (check out his review of Seagal’s incomprehensible Into The Sun), but did you know that the reason we haven’t been seeing many Seagal movies recently is due to an FBI probe? Neither did I, but that’s what he’s claiming.

“False FBI accusations fueled thousands of articles saying that I terrorize journalists and associate with the Mafia,” Seagal told the newspaper. “These kinds of inflammatory allegations scare studio heads and independent producers — and kill careers.”

[…]

The FBI investigation stemmed from Seagal’s ties to former private detective Anthony Pellicano, who once was employed by many Hollywood stars, directors and producers, but is now in federal prison awaiting trial on wire-tapping and other charges.

The Pellicano investigation dates to 2002 when a free-lance reporter for the Los Angeles Times found a dead fish, a red rose and a note saying “Stop!” on her car. At the time, the reporter was researching Seagal and a former business partner.

Seagal told the Times that he and Pellicano had not been on speaking terms since the 1990s and the Times’ story said his lawyers told FBI agents that by 2002, Seagal and Pellicano had become rivals in a bitter legal dispute.

The actor said in October 2004, an FBI official told him that federal agents knew he had nothing to do with the Pellicano investigation. Still, Seagal claims they have not publicly exonerated him.

Both shockingly and disappointingly, Seagal was apparently suspected of links to the Italian-American Mafia, and not the Yakuza.

Ayase ghetto watch: 75 year old woman in murder- (attempted) suicide


I live in Ayase, a nice little suburb on the Tokyo city limits of Adachi-ku. It is not a very well known area (neighboring Kameari is famous for the anime “Kochikame“), save for crime-related issues. First, Tokyo Detention Center is a 10 minute walk from the station. It is the successor institution to the now-closed Sugamo Prison and has hosted a cavalcade of famous prisoners, recently the fallen star and former Livedoor president Takafumi Horie and Aum Supreme Truth cult leader Shoko Asahara (who recently ran out of appeals in his death penalty case).

Also, some famously heinous crimes have taken place here:
1. A man who was convicted with a suspended sentence in Hokkaido for imprisoning a 20-year-old woman for two weeks in his home in 2001 repeated his crime in 2004 when he lured an 18-year-old Hyogo Prefecture woman he met in a chat room into his apartment in Ayase. Just as he had done in the first incident, he used a dog collar to keep the woman under wraps. She escaped after 3 months but has suffered from PTSD ever since. The man was not arrested until May 2005 (Wikipedia seems to suggest that he was able to claim psychological troubles to avoid arrest, perhaps due to being from a prominent Aomori prefecture family), at which time more than 1,000 “human pet” themed adult video games were confiscated from his apartment. I first heard about this when apartment hunting because a room was open in the same building where the crime took place. We ended up not taking it partly for the creepiness factor but mainly because it was too expensive considering its distance from the station.

2. In 1989, a group of at least 6 young men (4 of whom were successfully prosecuted; all were between 16 and 18, under the age of majority in Japan of 20) imprisoned a 19-year-old high school girl in one of the boy’s homes (located in Ayase) for 41 days, raping and abusing her until she finally died. The boys then placed the girl in a barrel, filled it with concrete, and hid the barrel in Wakasu, Koto-ku, Tokyo. The incident was only discovered after one of the boys confessed to it when police arrested him for another crime.

So as I get to know my area a little better, I plan to keep track of some of the news about town. This time up, we have an murder-attempted-suicide:

Asahi:

80-year-old man stabbed to death, wife severely injured in apparent murder-suicide attempt (Adachi Ward, Tokyo)

August 10, 2007

At approximately 8:10PM on August 9, a passerby reported to 110 (Japan’s 911) that a man had collapsed in the doorway of a hardware store in Towa, Adachi Ward 2-chome. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Ayase Precinct sped to the scene and found the 80-year-old store own stabbed in the abdomen. He died almost immediately after beeing rushed to a nearby hospital. His wife (age 75) was found in the 2nd floor bathroom with severe stab wounds to her stomach. She told police that she stabbed her husband and then tried to kill herself. The police view the incident as a non-consensual shinju (murder-suicide) and are investigating the wife’s motive.

Investigators say the man fled his house and asked passersby for help, saying his wife had stabbed him. A suicide note apparently written by the wife was found at the scene.

Mid-level NK soldiers pawning their uniforms for cash


ZAKZAK reports that while authentic North Korean army uniforms have been available for sale in China near the North Korean border for some time, until recently you could only find low-level grunts. But now real rarities have found their way to China – actual ceremonial uniforms worn by colonels at occasions attended by Kim Jong Il himself. In the DPRK’s Korean People’s Army, colonels are 8th from the top of the 24-rank hierarchy of which the late Kim Il Sung remains the top.

Normal usually sell for about 37,000 yen (2300 yuan or about $340) and usually go to South Korean or Japanese tourists, according to one seller. The uniforms are in abundance as soldiers pawn them to pay for daily necessities. Experts quoted in the article felt that this indicated some further degradation of whatever order is left in the North Korean military, who are supposed to be some of the best taken care of people in the country.

The uniforms make it to China through a small network of traders who move back and forth along the border, often making deals from within NK with carefully hidden mobile phones.

Various: Former 1960s student activist now DPJ president of Upper House

** Asahi, in an editorial praising the supposed end of back-room deals between Diet ruling and opposition camps:

The new president of the Upper House is a son of the late Saburo Eda, who served as general secretary of the Japan Socialist Party during the 1960s. When he was a student at the University of Tokyo, Satsuki Eda earned a reputation as a leading campus activist. Eda was deeply involved in the student movement opposing the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which was signed in 1960. In a tragic episode in this movement that occurred on June 15, 1960, Michiko Kanba, a University of Tokyo student, died in a clash between police and demonstrators who crashed into the Diet premises. Eda was among the protesters on that day.

At that time, Nobusuke Kishi was the prime minister. Kishi’s house was often surrounded by demonstrators. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was then a young grandson of the conservative politician and would play with Kishi at his house, as Abe recalls in his book. Kishi is said to have looked amused as his grandson repeatedly said two words: “Anpo Hantai!” (Down with the security pact!), which was the main slogan of the demonstrators.

Ironically, Eda, who once fought fiercely against Kishi, will look down at Abe, who reveres his grandfather, from the seat of the Upper House president.

** And in other news, in case you needed confirmation that Koizumi is interested in forming his own party, check out this reecnt editorial in Nikkei by Naoki Tanaka, a former Keidanren-related think tank head who now is in charge of “Center for International Public Policy Studies” the Koizumi think tank:

LDP leadership concluded, without much thought, that if the party openly criticized civil servants for their perceived sins in those areas, then the electorate would take the view the ruling party was indeed successfully taking over the baton of reform from the Koizumi. However, the electorate must realize that the new LDP leadership is an entirely different team from the one led by Koizumi and it was not something that could be easily grafted on Koizumi’s legacy of reform. What it all boils down to is that the LDP already suffers from reform fatigue, and the need for a party that can replace the LDP has become imperative.

Through the nationwide discussions that took place prior to the latest election, there was a shared understanding among the electorate that the purpose of the upper house poll was to give a score to the sitting government. Considering these results, one can expect the Japanese media to press Abe, who has vowed to stay on despite his party’s election rout, to dissolve the lower house and call a general election. This would take Japan into a season of fundamental political upheaval in which all involved, particularly the electorate, will have to re-examine the essence of the reform agenda and the political methods employed to attain reforms.

You can interpret that line several ways, but given the fact that the DPJ and Kokumin Shinto are submitting a bill that would freeze postal privatization, I doubt Mr. Koizumi or his cronies will have much use for them either.

“Elections” in North Korea

While I am sure most of you are watching the LDP get trounced by the DPJ in today’s upper house election (just as I predicted, of course), I just wanted to let you know that this isn’t the only election happening today (thanks to ZAKZAK):

Elections in North Korea, too? A Sunday election with no losers and 99.8% voter turnout.

On July 29, an election will take place in North Korea. However, with a voter turnout of 99.8%, just one candidate for each election district, and no writing implements to vote with, it would be better described as a “ceremony” than an election.

North Korea uses single-member election districts similar to Japan’s, but there is no proportional representation because of the de facto dominance by the Worker’s Party of Korea. Citizens can vote from age 17, and in this election provincial, city, and county representatives will be selected. On August 3, an election will be held to select members of the Supreme People’s Assembly (NK’s parliament), in which even dictator Kim Jong Il (age 65) will run as a candidate. Kim has won a consecutive 5 terms in office starting in 1982 (but of course, none of the “candidates” ever actually lose in this election).

An unnamed private researcher explains: “The election form says ‘I vote affirmatively to make X a representative’ and if the voter agrees, he/she simply places the vote in the box. The rules state that you are to place an X on the election form if you disagree, but they do not provide any writing implements at the election office.”

There are supposedly more than 600 members of the SPA, but the election districts are listed by number and do not specify which region the candidate is supposed to represent. Neither are voters informed who the candidates are before the election, so it makes no difference to the voters who is in office.

Kim’s election district changes each time: for example, in 1998 he ran in the “Korean People’s Army 666th Electoral District.”

Kazuo Miyazuka, a professor at Yamanashi Gakuin University who is familiar with NK’s internal situation, notes “Since 100% of the voters vote affirmatively, this is not an election at all. It is a chance to test whether the people will faithfully participate and is used as a way to dominate the people.”

The Mideast envoy?

The following is a brief exchange from this video, beginning at around 4:20.

Narrator: Who is the Antichrist?

Woman:  He will be charismatic but he will also be a man of peace, so he will be one who has promoted peace for many years.

Man: There is gonna be a peace treaty, but that’s a false peace treaty. Eventually when The Lord comes back, that’ll take care of it.

Mustachioed man: The one who forces Israel into a peace treaty with the Arabs is the one who is- you have to watch out for.

Narrator: Is the beast.

Mustache man: Right.

So, if Tony Blair succeeds in his new job, that makes him the Antichrist?

Germany’s hate on Scientologists

Some readers may have been wondering exactly why Germany hates them so much. And while Slate doesn’t exactly answer the question, today’s column does make a half-hearted attempt.

Some German officials believe Scientology’s ideology is rooted in a kind of political extremism—a bit of a sensitive area for Germany since World War II. They also argue that Scientology is not a religion but a business, since local churches operate like franchises of the main organization.

How much do they hate Scientology in Germany? Well, aside from a ban (later overturned ) on Tom Cruise from filming at German military site, there was also the following statement made against him.

Thomas Gandow, 60, chief spokesman on religious cults for the German Protestant Church, described Scientology as a “totalitarian organisation” and said that Mr Cruise had become “the Goebbels of Scientology”.

Germany also apparently considered forcing Microsoft to debundle the Diskkeeper anti-fragmentation software from Windows 2000, not for anti trust reasons, but because the company who licensed the product to Microsoft is Scientology-led.

Another fringe religion (although probably a much larger one) getting a lot of attention recently is Mormonism. It is a widely known piece of computer history trivia that the late, great Wordperfect was created by Mormon, and despite the shaky reputation that Mormonism has in some quarters, as far as I know there was never any particular controversy over using software developed by them.

Bonus trivia: Bruce Bastian, one of the two original Mormon developers of Wordperfect, later came out as gay and now devotes his time and fortune to gay activism.