Interview with the Translator, Hills of Silver Ruins, Interrogations

Kate: Interrogations occur at various times in the novels. In Hills of Silver Ruins, Shison and then Chou’un are interrogated about the assassination attempt on the Taiho.

How do Japanese contemporary interrogations run? Are there lawyers presented? Recordings? Lists of warnings and rights? As you’ve commented, torture was common (and expected) historically. Not now, of course, but where does society versus the individual situate itself?

Eugene: The Edo period police procedural Onihei presents a decent overview of acceptable law enforcement practices in the eighteenth century. Torture was widely used and due process didn't exist. Heizo, the equivalent of a precinct captain, is allowed to be a man of his time. He doesn't object to using torture as long as it produces useful information.

His favorite tactic (I don't know how accurate this is but it makes sense) is to convince minor crooks to work for him as confidential informants, rather like Sherlock Holmes's Baker Street Irregulars.

In some respects, not much has changed in the past two centuries. Okay, suspects aren't physically tortured, but they are psychologically.

Just look at how interrogation scenes are portrayed in Japanese police procedurals in which the cops are the good guys. The suspect is seated at a teeny tiny table in a teeny tiny room while two, three, four cops circle him like a pack of predators and scream questions at him. Not a lawyer in sight (there wouldn't be enough space to begin with).

Okay, in a show like Partners, at some point the Sugishita will poke his head into the room and ask the one penetrating question that cracks the case. But habeas corpus rights don't kick in for 23 days. The cops can keep you on ice for three weeks before giving you a hearing before a judge. And forget about bail. Your lawyer will see you in jail.

In Hero, another show where the prosecuting attorneys are the protagonists, a defense lawyer isn't present even during pre-trial depositions. The most frightening (yet predictable) consequence of this system is an overreliance on confessions, which produces the inevitable miscarriages of justice. As I said, some things haven't changed in centuries.

Hence 99.9, a police procedural about a team of eccentric criminal defense lawyers. The title refers to the conviction rate for the (very few) cases that actually reach the trial phase. Michael Cucek sees this laissez-faire-meets-iron-fist approach as part of a nationwide scared-straight strategy:

By selectively, infrequently, but mercilessly applying themselves to cases, the police and the courts create strong incentives for the citizens to police themselves . . . Tak[ing] note of what happens to those who become trapped in the pit of the law (don't call it "justice") system, [they] will strive, of their own volition, to never, ever become trapped in that system themselves.

That is undoubtedly what freaked out Carlos Ghosn. He must have thought he was headed for the gulags. Still, while I empathize with his plight, he should have taken pointers from Paul McCartney instead of pretending to be Harrison Ford in The Fugitive.

When McCartney got arrested for marijuana possession at Narita International Airport in 1980, he quickly realized that conformity was the quickest way out. After being promptly hauled off to jail, he did everything that was expected of him without a contrary word.

I started to realise, "Right, I'm going to get up when the light goes on, I'm going to be the first up, I'm going to be the first with his room cleaned, I'm going to roll up my bed, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that."

Granted, anyone else caught with a half a pound of marijuana in his possession would have gotten seven years in the pen, not deported after nine days in detention. But becoming a model prisoner certainly helped in his case.

On the other hand, taking the long view, the scales of cosmic justice balance in a way. Other aspects of the judicial system in Japan are incredibly lax by American standards. In Japan through the Looking Glass, Alan MacFarlane points out that, compared to the United States, prison sentences

are lighter in every category of crime, except for homicide. Suspended sentences are meted out extensively, as are small fines. Less than two percent of all those convicted of a crime ever serve a jail sentence as compared with more than 45 percent in the United States.

The criminal justice system can deliver a slap on the wrist knowing that society won't spare the rod. At the end of the perp-walk, a Japanese celebrity nabbed for drug possession won't get that much worse of a sentence than he would in Hollywood. But his career will be wrecked until he's wandered in the wilderness for forty metaphorical years.