The Japanese Failure of Gun Control

Itcho Ito, the mayor of Nagasaki, Japan, was shot and killed by a mem­ber of the Yakuza.

Japan has the most strict form of gun con­trol that exists in the “demo­c­ra­tic” por­tion of the world. This is an exam­ple of how the law-abiding pop­u­lace is not effec­tively pro­tected by gun con­trol, because crim­i­nals will find alter­na­tive routes to reach­ing their cho­sen goal.

Meanwhile, yes, gun crime is low in Japan. This is what is sac­ri­ficed (quotes from Dave Kopel’s arti­cle in the Asia-Pacific Law Review, 1993):

In prac­tice, the spe­cial law for weapons searches is not nec­es­sary, since the police rou­tinely search at will. They ask sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters to show them what is in their purse or sack.[34] In the rare cases where a policeman’s search (for a gun or any other con­tra­band) is ruled ille­gal, it hardly mat­ters; the Japanese courts per­mit the use of ille­gally seized evi­dence.[35]

[…]

‘Home visit is one of the most impor­tant duties of offi­cers assigned to police…’ explains the Japanese National Police Agency. In twice-a-year visit, offi­cers fill out Residence Information Cards about who lives where and which fam­ily mem­ber to con­tact in case of emer­gency, what rela­tion peo­ple in the house have to each other, what kind of work they do, if they work late, and what kind of cars they own.[37] The police also check on all gun licensees, to make sure that no gun has been stolen or mis­used, that the gun is securely stored, and that the licensees are emo­tion­ally sta­ble.[38]

[…]

After the arrest, a sus­pect may be detained with­out bail for up to 28 days before the pros­e­cu­tor brings the sus­pect before a judge.[42] Even after the 28 day period is com­pleted, deten­tion in a Japanese police sta­tion may con­tinue on a vari­ety of pre­texts, such as pre­vent­ing the defen­dant from destroy­ing evi­dence. Rearrest on another charge, bekken taihö, is a com­mon police tac­tic for start­ing the sus­pect on another 28 day inter­ro­ga­tion process. ‘Rearrest’ may (p.30)occur while the sus­pect is still being held at the police sta­tion on the first charge. Some defen­dants may be held for sev­eral months with­out ever being brought before a judge.[43] Courts approve 99.5 per cent of pros­e­cu­tors’ requests for deten­tions.[44]

Criminal defense lawyers are the only peo­ple allowed to visit a sus­pect in cus­tody, and those meet­ings are strictly limited.Even that access will be denied if it ham­pers the police inves­ti­ga­tion. While under deten­tion, sus­pects can be inter­ro­gated 12 hours a day, allowed to bathe only every fifth day, and may be pro­hib­ited from stand­ing up, lying down, or lean­ing against the wall of their jail cells.[45][46] Amnesty International calls the Japanese police cus­tody sys­tem a ‘fla­grant vio­la­tion of United Nations human rights prin­ci­ples’. In the months while a sus­pect is held pris­oner, the defense coun­sel may see his or her client for one to five meet­ings last­ing about 15 min­utes each.

The con­fes­sion rate is 95 per cent.[47] As a Tokyo police sergeant observes, ‘It is no use to protest against power’.[48]The Tokyo Bar Association states that the police rou­tinely ‘engage in tor­ture or ille­gal treat­ment’. The Tokyo Bar is par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal of the judi­ciary for its near-total dis­in­ter­est in coer­cion dur­ing the con­fes­sion process. ‘Even in cases where sus­pects claimed to have been tor­tured and their bod­ies bore phys­i­cal traces to back their claims, courts have still accepted their con­fes­sions’.[49] Suspects are not allowed to read con­fes­sions before they sign them, and sus­pects com­monly com­plain that their con­fes­sion was altered after sig­na­ture. The police use con­fes­sion as their main inves­tiga­tive tech­nique, and when that fails, they can become frus­trated and angry.

In Japan, the legal sys­tem is, in effect, an omnipo­tent and uni­tary state author­ity. All law enforce­ment admin­is­tra­tors in Japan are appointed by the National Police Agency and receive their fund­ing from the NPA. Hence, the police are insu­lated from com­plaints from politi­cians or other cit­i­zens.[50] There is hardly any check on the power of the state, save its own conscience.

In 1981, the D.C. Appellate Court ruled in Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d, that “a gov­ern­ment and its agents are under no gen­eral duty to pro­vide pub­lic ser­vices, such as police pro­tec­tion, to any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen.” The story is as fol­lows: in 1975 two men broke into a house shared by three female room­mates and a child. Two of the women hid on the roof and called the police. The police arrived and knocked on the front door, but when no one answered they left. The women called the police again and were told that help was on the way. The women on the roof were caught when they shouted to who they thought were the returned police — but the slip of paper on which the women’s request was made was lost in the shuf­fle, and the police did not arrive. The women were raped and beaten for four­teen hours.

In Warren, the women con­tacted the police for help. Help was not pro­vided. The Court ruled then, as it had ruled before, that police can­not be held account­able to indi­vid­u­als. The prac­ti­cal scope of such a respon­si­bil­ity is impos­si­ble. Further, if such a respon­si­bil­ity were to be acknowl­edged, a later step would be to sue indi­vid­ual police offi­cers for crimes that crim­i­nals com­mit against vic­tims. That sit­u­a­tion would be ridicu­lous and impos­si­ble to man­age. The Court was right. We can­not demand such cov­er­age from gov­ern­ment and government-provided secu­rity forces.

Nonetheless, we Americans are told two con­flict­ing poli­cies: we really shouldn’t try to pro­tect our­selves, but the police aren’t really respon­si­ble for our safety. Society and gov­ern­ment can­not have it both ways!

Therefore, indi­vid­u­als must be allowed to pro­tect them­selves. The alter­na­tive is to sac­ri­fice nearly all other due process rights, as is done in Japan. Even when such sac­ri­fices of human rights are made, how­ever, the mur­der of Mayor Ito of Nagasaki proves that the sys­tem is insuf­fi­cient to pro­tect the most basic right: that of the pur­suit of life.