Self-Censorship and Suppression: How Media Interference in Japan Conceals Human Rights Violations in the Criminal Justice System from the Public

Abstract

The Japanese Criminal Justice System is one of many systems with glaring issues that contradict commitments to protecting human rights. Civil society is well aware of how Japanese police and prosecution actively and consistently violate the human rights of the accused. The Japanese constitution explicitly outlines language that protects the right to due process and the freedom from cruel and unusual treatment and punishment. However, the legal code that defines criminal procedure fails to support these individual rights in court and permits conditions for police and prosecutors to carry out predatory and abusive practices, in turn estranging the accused from a fair chance at obtaining justice. Although there is extensive literature that provides explanations for why this abuse happens and what the implications of these abuses are for carrying out justice, there is little scholarly explanation for why there is not more pressure to reform this system. This thesis places Japan’s current criminal justice system in the context of the nation’s historical relationship with authoritarian policing. By interweaving fieldwork in Japan with civil society experts, data on Japanese media and public opinion on the criminal justice system, extensively reported case studies exposing human rights violations in criminal proceedings, and analysis of attempts at reform, this thesis draws attention to a missing link between the press and the Japanese people. This thesis uses four chapters of analysis, finding that Japan's single-party-dominant democracy weakens the independence of the press, which should be a key link between civil society’s information regarding human rights violations and the “need to know” of the Japanese people. Without such a link, a society that culturally tends to avoid questioning authority and values cohesion over disruption fails to motivate its people to democratically advocate for their needs and promote a competitive democracy that depends on the will of its people. This thesis illustrates that without an empowered and well-informed constituency, the government lacks an accountability mechanism to enforce the protection of human rights and comprehensive reform. This thesis concludes by analyzing the weaknesses of proposed and implemented reforms. The National Diet’s attempts at reform are rather futile following their implementation, receiving little pressure to truly transform a system that regularly permits abusive practices that violate the constitutional and human rights of the accused. This closing portion connects this lack of accountability with the government’s ability to cloak the true extent of its efforts to redress human rights violations in criminal justice.