00:00
Judgment day, the day Japans most notorious criminal was sentenced to death. Five thousand people turned up to see justice done. Shoko Asahara was a leader of the cult that released sarin gas on Tokyos subway. Twelve people were killed, thousands injured a horrible shock for a nation that prides itself on the lowest crime rates in the industrial world.
00:54
The trial took eight years and the verdict was no surprise, not just because the evidence against the guru was strong, but also because a staggering number of people charged with crimes in Japan are found guilty.
01:12
YUICHI KAIDO: I think the figure is higher than 99.9%. In reality, it would be fair to say that Japanese criminal court cases are simply ceremonies to impose punishment rather than determine guilt.
01:35
Most people believe that Shoko Asahara got what he deserved, but that doesnt mean Japanese justice is perfect. Far from it. This is a first world country, wealthy and democratic, but in many ways it has a third world criminal justicesystem. This is the public face of the criminal justice system. Firm but fair. As far as the police are concerned, the conviction rate is something to be proud of, proof watertight cases are going to trial. But theres another more worrying explanation. There are no juries in Japan. Judges place enormous weight on confessions and the police are skilled at making people talk. In most democracies someone suspected of a crime, other than terrorism, can only be held in police custody for a few hours, sometimes a few days. After that, the person must be charged or released. In Japan though, you can be detained for more than three weeks. During that time access to a lawyer is extremely limited. You can be interrogated around the clock without a solicitor being present and without any recording being made. The system works. Ninety per cent of defendants end up owning up, but its also a system prone to mistakes, and in country with the death penalty mistakes can be lethal.
03:40
YUICHI KAIDO: Youll be interrogated for the whole time. When you cant take it any more, you will confess to a crime you didnt commit. We believe there are many cases like this. In the worst cases, there have been reports of violent acts and threats. They tell the suspects that if they dont confess, their families will be in danger.
04:14
Yuichi Kaido is one of Tokyos most successful defence lawyers. Hes been practicing for more than twenty years, and while his record is impressive by Japanese standards, it would be embarrassing anywhere else.
04:29
In only one of my cases has the defendant been completely acquitted although there have been many cases where the charges have been reduced from what the prosecutors originally wanted.
04:53
Those found guilty of serious offences end up in a world of zero tolerance. The gaol systems secrets are closely guarded. Fukuoka prison is one of Japans biggest. Many of the inmates are Yakuza, members of criminal gangs. The conditions are spartan, the rules strict. Prisoners can be kept in solitary confinement for decades. Others live eight to a room.
05:30
PRISON GUARD: We treated them with love and a firm attitude.
05:48
JUNICHI MAEDA GUARD: When I used to be in charge of a factory, I thought of the prisoners as my sons and brothers. Those feelings remain in my heart.
06:11
They are allowed to exercise for half an hour, three times a week. Every aspect of life is strictly regulated. In the gaol factories, prisoners are not allowed to speak or even look at each other. You can be punished for glancing at a clock or looking out the window. Other rules stipulate the way to lie in bed, when and how to sit down, and the method of moving around the prison. Human rights groups believe the regimentation is a way of stifling individuality and imposing absolute control.
06:58
PRISON GUARD: The rules exist to protect the inmates peaceful lives. If anyone breaks the rules, we deal out certain punishments.
07:22
Its harsh but effective. Escape attempts are extremely rare, riots unheard of. Prisoners who complain are branded troublemakers and receive special treatment.
07:41
YUICHI KAIDO: In a Japanese prison, normal inmates that are obedient and compliant can lead a normal life. But those who try to rebel against the authority will endure hell.
07:55
Nowhere is more hellish than this place, the notorious Nagoya Gaol. For years the veil of secrecy surrounding this prison was as impervious as the outside wall. Now though, terrifying details about life inside are starting to escape. In one recent case, the guards striped a prisoner naked, pinned him to the floor and aimed a high-pressured fire hose at his buttocks. The force was so great it caused massive internal injuries and the man died. The prison has tried to cover it up and maintains that the anal trauma was self-inflicted. Several Nagoya guards are now on trial for killing a second inmate and injuring a third so badly he spent two months in hospital.
08:57
KAZUTOMI HONDA: Its like a dictatorship. How should I describe it? Its like a slave camp.
SIMKIN: Kazutomi Honda is a former Nagoya inmate. On five occasions, Honda-san says he was bound with these leather handcuffs, thrown into a protection chamber, a special solitary cell, then beaten and kicked by the guards.
09:24
KAZUTOMI HONDA: During my two years and four months in prison, I received cruel treatment and violence and witnessed daily violence and acts of injustice.
09:53
But such is the secrecy surround the gaol system, no one knows how many inmates are being killed by their captors. Mizuho Fukshima is trying to find out. Shes the leader of one of Japans opposition parties.
10:14
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA: If they put you in leather handcuffs you cant use either of your hands. You have to wear pants with a hole in the crotch so you can go to the toilet. Theres no table for food so you eat off the ground without hands like a dog.
10:29
After years of lobbying, Fukushima-san has obtained the heavily censored medical records of those who have died in prison. In the last decade there have been nearly two hundred and fifty suspicious deaths.
10:43
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA: Among those, we found many cases of torture and abuse and cases where people died in protection chambers wearing leather handcuffs.
10:56
Others die in very different circumstances. Thirty people were sentenced to death last year alone.. Japan has hanged thirty-seven of its citizens in the last decade. Kiichi Toya witnessed several executions and it was enough to turn him into a fierce critic of the death penalty.
11:20
KIICHI TOYA: Its so cruel! Theres nothing crueller than this! It felt like we were the ones being killed. I think it was like that. It was certainly like that for me so I assume the other guards felt the same way. We prayed together in a loud voice with all our might.
11:50
Once youre on death row, theres usually only one way out through the trapdoor. Only four men have managed to get their convictions overturned. This man is one of them. His prison has since been demolished, but Sakae Menda often returns to the place where the gallows stood and remembers a nightmare that lasted thirty years.
12:33
SAKAE MENDA: I have no good memories. We would wake up in the morning, go to church together before breakfast, pray, and exchange smiles. We would think, today could be the last time we do this or we could repeat it tomorrow. You never knew.
12:53
Sakae Mendas trial began in 1949. Two people were beaten to death with an axe, Menda was arrested. He protested his innocence, but quickly discovered how his countrys criminal justice system can operate.
13:25
SAKAE MENDA: I was taken to the police station on January 13, and they didnt let me sleep a wink until the 19th. They didnt let me eat, smoke or drink water and the treatment was terrible. At the worst times, they would tie my legs together, hang me upside down from the ceiling and hit me with a green stick of bamboo.
14:02
Eventually, the exhausted, broken suspect confessed to a crime he did not commit. Menda was sentenced to death. He still has the documents that condemned him and a letter that was sent to his family.
SAKAE MENDA [reading]: Soon the death sentence will be carried out. Do you wish to collect the dead body after the execution?
Appeal after appeal was rejected until finally in 1983, it emerged the police had deliberately hidden evidence of an alibi.
14:34
After thirty-four years, Sakae Menda was a free man, the first prisoner to get off death row alive. His joy was tempered while in prison hed watched eighty of his colleagues led to their deaths. Menda believes a good many were innocent.
14:48
SAKAE MENDA: The people called to die would yell out to everyone Many thanks for your kindness. I will be going first and will be waiting for you. They leave with those words and its painful for those left behind. There are no words to describe that feeling.
15:24
Toshiaki Kataoka is one of the scores of prisoners still on death row. During the Vietnam War he blew up the headquarters of a munitions company, killing eight people. He was convicted by the courts then renounced by his family something that often happens to murderers in a country where social harmony is considered crucial. For years Kataoka received no visitors. That changed when he was adopted by Sumiko Masunaga and her daughter Yoko.
16:07
SUMIKO MASUNAGA: I think the death penalty is about humans killing humans, and I decided to adopt him because I am absolutely opposed to humans killing humans.
16:29
It was a brave decision. They know Kataokas life could be extinguished at any time, decisions on who is executed and when seem arbitrary. Their kindness to a criminal is considered suspicious and dangerous. The couple faces surveillance from the police and discrimination from the community. Yoko, a doctor, has had job offers withdrawn by hospitals.
17:02
YOKO: I was inclined to take the job, but ten days later the top person asked me to come for another interview. When I turned up, four or five big men surrounded me and started asking Why are you against the death penalty? The question had nothing to do with the job, and they kept saying, Why dont you support the death penalty? Why are you involved with a prisoner on death row? and hitting the desk hard.
17:34
Every few months, Sumiko is allowed to visit her adopted son. Its his only contact with the outside world. He, like most death row prisoners, lives in total silence, kept in solitary confinement twenty four hours a day, forbidden from talking to the guards or other prisoners.
17:55
YOKO: Before, he was able to look through a window and see birds flying in the sky or on a tree and stray cats walking through the garden. His only friend was a spider. He lived by having a spider as a friend but since he moved to the new building, theres no spider or ant and he cannot see the sky.
18:24
Todays visit lasts fifteen minutes. Sumiko emerges with a message from death row.
18:46
SUMIKO MASUNAGA: He says hell try by all means to fight and come out alive. After all, I certainly think everyone is scared by the death penalty. I think hes trying to deny the fear by fighting.
19:19
Sumiko will only find out that her son has been executed after the event. Japans executions are carried out in secret. There are no public announcements and no opportunities for a final farewell. Hiroko Hikata discovered the way things work in appalling circumstances. Her brother, Shuji Kimura, was convicted of killing a girl. He sent many letters from prison begging forgiveness.
19:48
HIROKO HIKATA [reading]: I am cornered into a situation from which there is no turning back
20:01
Kimura had been on death row for eight years when Hikata-san and her mother tried to pay a visit.
20:09
HIROKO HIKATA: I think it was round 10.30 in the morning when our turn came. But the prison guard called out to mother that they were busy, and said to come back in the afternoon. I asked him, Will we really be able to meet him? And he said, Yes, you will see him.
20:33
The women returned at the appointed time. Kimura was brought in, in a coffin. Hed been executed an hour earlier.
20:45
HIROKO HIKATA: His eyes were popping out, and his mouth was like this and his teeth were bared. My mother was unable to stand. We had to hold her upright.
21:18
The prisoners themselves are only told of their fate one hour before execution. The lack of notice means they spend every day worrying it will be their last.
21:45
SAKAE MENDA: When you think there will be an execution on a certain day, the atmosphere is very quite and you can hear a needle being drooped. In a bottomless loneliness, the silence flows out. You feel as if your body is falling into the bottom of the ground.
21:58
The Government defends the practice, arguing prisoners might commit suicide if theyre given advance warning. But Sakae Menda says its cruel, not kind. Hell never forget the fear he felt each morning, the constant dread, waiting to hear if the guards would stop outside his door.
22:29
SAKAE MENDA: Its strange when they near your cell. You lose all your strength, and you are like this. You lose all your strength as if a rope is dragging it out of you. Then the footsteps stop in front of another solitary confinement cell, and when you hear the sound of the key turning you feel relieved.
23:05
Falsely accused, wrongly convicted, Sakae Menda is powerful evidence of the flaws in Japans justice system. Theres now talk of introducing juries and reforming the prisons, but real change is unlikely. For centuries the stability of society was considered all important, the State all powerful. Western notions of human rights are relatively new. The result is a very safe country with a very different understanding of crime and punishment.
Judgment day, the day Japans most notorious criminal was sentenced to death. Five thousand people turned up to see justice done. Shoko Asahara was a leader of the cult that released sarin gas on Tokyos subway. Twelve people were killed, thousands injured a horrible shock for a nation that prides itself on the lowest crime rates in the industrial world.
00:54
The trial took eight years and the verdict was no surprise, not just because the evidence against the guru was strong, but also because a staggering number of people charged with crimes in Japan are found guilty.
01:12
YUICHI KAIDO: I think the figure is higher than 99.9%. In reality, it would be fair to say that Japanese criminal court cases are simply ceremonies to impose punishment rather than determine guilt.
01:35
Most people believe that Shoko Asahara got what he deserved, but that doesnt mean Japanese justice is perfect. Far from it. This is a first world country, wealthy and democratic, but in many ways it has a third world criminal justicesystem. This is the public face of the criminal justice system. Firm but fair. As far as the police are concerned, the conviction rate is something to be proud of, proof watertight cases are going to trial. But theres another more worrying explanation. There are no juries in Japan. Judges place enormous weight on confessions and the police are skilled at making people talk. In most democracies someone suspected of a crime, other than terrorism, can only be held in police custody for a few hours, sometimes a few days. After that, the person must be charged or released. In Japan though, you can be detained for more than three weeks. During that time access to a lawyer is extremely limited. You can be interrogated around the clock without a solicitor being present and without any recording being made. The system works. Ninety per cent of defendants end up owning up, but its also a system prone to mistakes, and in country with the death penalty mistakes can be lethal.
03:40
YUICHI KAIDO: Youll be interrogated for the whole time. When you cant take it any more, you will confess to a crime you didnt commit. We believe there are many cases like this. In the worst cases, there have been reports of violent acts and threats. They tell the suspects that if they dont confess, their families will be in danger.
04:14
Yuichi Kaido is one of Tokyos most successful defence lawyers. Hes been practicing for more than twenty years, and while his record is impressive by Japanese standards, it would be embarrassing anywhere else.
04:29
In only one of my cases has the defendant been completely acquitted although there have been many cases where the charges have been reduced from what the prosecutors originally wanted.
04:53
Those found guilty of serious offences end up in a world of zero tolerance. The gaol systems secrets are closely guarded. Fukuoka prison is one of Japans biggest. Many of the inmates are Yakuza, members of criminal gangs. The conditions are spartan, the rules strict. Prisoners can be kept in solitary confinement for decades. Others live eight to a room.
05:30
PRISON GUARD: We treated them with love and a firm attitude.
05:48
JUNICHI MAEDA GUARD: When I used to be in charge of a factory, I thought of the prisoners as my sons and brothers. Those feelings remain in my heart.
06:11
They are allowed to exercise for half an hour, three times a week. Every aspect of life is strictly regulated. In the gaol factories, prisoners are not allowed to speak or even look at each other. You can be punished for glancing at a clock or looking out the window. Other rules stipulate the way to lie in bed, when and how to sit down, and the method of moving around the prison. Human rights groups believe the regimentation is a way of stifling individuality and imposing absolute control.
06:58
PRISON GUARD: The rules exist to protect the inmates peaceful lives. If anyone breaks the rules, we deal out certain punishments.
07:22
Its harsh but effective. Escape attempts are extremely rare, riots unheard of. Prisoners who complain are branded troublemakers and receive special treatment.
07:41
YUICHI KAIDO: In a Japanese prison, normal inmates that are obedient and compliant can lead a normal life. But those who try to rebel against the authority will endure hell.
07:55
Nowhere is more hellish than this place, the notorious Nagoya Gaol. For years the veil of secrecy surrounding this prison was as impervious as the outside wall. Now though, terrifying details about life inside are starting to escape. In one recent case, the guards striped a prisoner naked, pinned him to the floor and aimed a high-pressured fire hose at his buttocks. The force was so great it caused massive internal injuries and the man died. The prison has tried to cover it up and maintains that the anal trauma was self-inflicted. Several Nagoya guards are now on trial for killing a second inmate and injuring a third so badly he spent two months in hospital.
08:57
KAZUTOMI HONDA: Its like a dictatorship. How should I describe it? Its like a slave camp.
SIMKIN: Kazutomi Honda is a former Nagoya inmate. On five occasions, Honda-san says he was bound with these leather handcuffs, thrown into a protection chamber, a special solitary cell, then beaten and kicked by the guards.
09:24
KAZUTOMI HONDA: During my two years and four months in prison, I received cruel treatment and violence and witnessed daily violence and acts of injustice.
09:53
But such is the secrecy surround the gaol system, no one knows how many inmates are being killed by their captors. Mizuho Fukshima is trying to find out. Shes the leader of one of Japans opposition parties.
10:14
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA: If they put you in leather handcuffs you cant use either of your hands. You have to wear pants with a hole in the crotch so you can go to the toilet. Theres no table for food so you eat off the ground without hands like a dog.
10:29
After years of lobbying, Fukushima-san has obtained the heavily censored medical records of those who have died in prison. In the last decade there have been nearly two hundred and fifty suspicious deaths.
10:43
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA: Among those, we found many cases of torture and abuse and cases where people died in protection chambers wearing leather handcuffs.
10:56
Others die in very different circumstances. Thirty people were sentenced to death last year alone.. Japan has hanged thirty-seven of its citizens in the last decade. Kiichi Toya witnessed several executions and it was enough to turn him into a fierce critic of the death penalty.
11:20
KIICHI TOYA: Its so cruel! Theres nothing crueller than this! It felt like we were the ones being killed. I think it was like that. It was certainly like that for me so I assume the other guards felt the same way. We prayed together in a loud voice with all our might.
11:50
Once youre on death row, theres usually only one way out through the trapdoor. Only four men have managed to get their convictions overturned. This man is one of them. His prison has since been demolished, but Sakae Menda often returns to the place where the gallows stood and remembers a nightmare that lasted thirty years.
12:33
SAKAE MENDA: I have no good memories. We would wake up in the morning, go to church together before breakfast, pray, and exchange smiles. We would think, today could be the last time we do this or we could repeat it tomorrow. You never knew.
12:53
Sakae Mendas trial began in 1949. Two people were beaten to death with an axe, Menda was arrested. He protested his innocence, but quickly discovered how his countrys criminal justice system can operate.
13:25
SAKAE MENDA: I was taken to the police station on January 13, and they didnt let me sleep a wink until the 19th. They didnt let me eat, smoke or drink water and the treatment was terrible. At the worst times, they would tie my legs together, hang me upside down from the ceiling and hit me with a green stick of bamboo.
14:02
Eventually, the exhausted, broken suspect confessed to a crime he did not commit. Menda was sentenced to death. He still has the documents that condemned him and a letter that was sent to his family.
SAKAE MENDA [reading]: Soon the death sentence will be carried out. Do you wish to collect the dead body after the execution?
Appeal after appeal was rejected until finally in 1983, it emerged the police had deliberately hidden evidence of an alibi.
14:34
After thirty-four years, Sakae Menda was a free man, the first prisoner to get off death row alive. His joy was tempered while in prison hed watched eighty of his colleagues led to their deaths. Menda believes a good many were innocent.
14:48
SAKAE MENDA: The people called to die would yell out to everyone Many thanks for your kindness. I will be going first and will be waiting for you. They leave with those words and its painful for those left behind. There are no words to describe that feeling.
15:24
Toshiaki Kataoka is one of the scores of prisoners still on death row. During the Vietnam War he blew up the headquarters of a munitions company, killing eight people. He was convicted by the courts then renounced by his family something that often happens to murderers in a country where social harmony is considered crucial. For years Kataoka received no visitors. That changed when he was adopted by Sumiko Masunaga and her daughter Yoko.
16:07
SUMIKO MASUNAGA: I think the death penalty is about humans killing humans, and I decided to adopt him because I am absolutely opposed to humans killing humans.
16:29
It was a brave decision. They know Kataokas life could be extinguished at any time, decisions on who is executed and when seem arbitrary. Their kindness to a criminal is considered suspicious and dangerous. The couple faces surveillance from the police and discrimination from the community. Yoko, a doctor, has had job offers withdrawn by hospitals.
17:02
YOKO: I was inclined to take the job, but ten days later the top person asked me to come for another interview. When I turned up, four or five big men surrounded me and started asking Why are you against the death penalty? The question had nothing to do with the job, and they kept saying, Why dont you support the death penalty? Why are you involved with a prisoner on death row? and hitting the desk hard.
17:34
Every few months, Sumiko is allowed to visit her adopted son. Its his only contact with the outside world. He, like most death row prisoners, lives in total silence, kept in solitary confinement twenty four hours a day, forbidden from talking to the guards or other prisoners.
17:55
YOKO: Before, he was able to look through a window and see birds flying in the sky or on a tree and stray cats walking through the garden. His only friend was a spider. He lived by having a spider as a friend but since he moved to the new building, theres no spider or ant and he cannot see the sky.
18:24
Todays visit lasts fifteen minutes. Sumiko emerges with a message from death row.
18:46
SUMIKO MASUNAGA: He says hell try by all means to fight and come out alive. After all, I certainly think everyone is scared by the death penalty. I think hes trying to deny the fear by fighting.
19:19
Sumiko will only find out that her son has been executed after the event. Japans executions are carried out in secret. There are no public announcements and no opportunities for a final farewell. Hiroko Hikata discovered the way things work in appalling circumstances. Her brother, Shuji Kimura, was convicted of killing a girl. He sent many letters from prison begging forgiveness.
19:48
HIROKO HIKATA [reading]: I am cornered into a situation from which there is no turning back
20:01
Kimura had been on death row for eight years when Hikata-san and her mother tried to pay a visit.
20:09
HIROKO HIKATA: I think it was round 10.30 in the morning when our turn came. But the prison guard called out to mother that they were busy, and said to come back in the afternoon. I asked him, Will we really be able to meet him? And he said, Yes, you will see him.
20:33
The women returned at the appointed time. Kimura was brought in, in a coffin. Hed been executed an hour earlier.
20:45
HIROKO HIKATA: His eyes were popping out, and his mouth was like this and his teeth were bared. My mother was unable to stand. We had to hold her upright.
21:18
The prisoners themselves are only told of their fate one hour before execution. The lack of notice means they spend every day worrying it will be their last.
21:45
SAKAE MENDA: When you think there will be an execution on a certain day, the atmosphere is very quite and you can hear a needle being drooped. In a bottomless loneliness, the silence flows out. You feel as if your body is falling into the bottom of the ground.
21:58
The Government defends the practice, arguing prisoners might commit suicide if theyre given advance warning. But Sakae Menda says its cruel, not kind. Hell never forget the fear he felt each morning, the constant dread, waiting to hear if the guards would stop outside his door.
22:29
SAKAE MENDA: Its strange when they near your cell. You lose all your strength, and you are like this. You lose all your strength as if a rope is dragging it out of you. Then the footsteps stop in front of another solitary confinement cell, and when you hear the sound of the key turning you feel relieved.
23:05
Falsely accused, wrongly convicted, Sakae Menda is powerful evidence of the flaws in Japans justice system. Theres now talk of introducing juries and reforming the prisons, but real change is unlikely. For centuries the stability of society was considered all important, the State all powerful. Western notions of human rights are relatively new. The result is a very safe country with a very different understanding of crime and punishment.