If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different than if he had a loud but normal argument you might see in any big box store in the US.
That he doesn't go on to protest why he got locked up makes me think it was something more serious.
Some time ago (can't easily find it anymore) there was a expose on UK prisons, which was interesting without even knowing what crime the prisoner was convicted of, but turns out it was abuse of a relative.
And also remember this treatment is at the point where they haven't been charged with anything, haven't been tried in court, and haven't been convicted.
The US's justice system is certainly lacking in many, many ways, but wow, this is barbaric. And it's designed for one thing: high conviction rates, regardless of guilt or innocence.
Yes it does. You need to go out of your way to attract the attention of the authorities in Japan. I can already guess what she did--received illegal drugs in the mail or brought them into the country. And based on all the references to mental health, etc. in the article, I'm sure it's claimed to be for some condition that Japanese people consider to be bullshit. The reason Japan is clean and orderly is because they apply a very sharp edge to anything rule breaking. You don't get to tell them how to run their society. It's not your place. And if you come to Japan, you play by their rules. If you don't like it, stay home.
Not that the US criminal system isn’t its own complete mess, but thank God for the concept of bail (going about your life outside of jail until trial or dismissal, within certain parameters) and right to see a judge within 24 hours, to avoid any kafkaesque nightmares like this.
Most people don't really understand it, and even the ones who do often have personal exceptions driven by emotion. The idea that you need to defend the guilty to protect the innocent is alien to a lot of people. Japan takes the lack of that assumption a step further though, since it's a society based on strict compliance to cultural norms... for better and for worse.
Having said all of that, most of these systems do a credible job of distinguishing the innocent from the guilty, although there's always more to do on that front. If you've ever worked anywhere near the court system you start to notice that people who make it through the system all of the way to a trial are frequently guilty and even more frequently recidivist.
Most people aren't criminals and never commit a serious offense, but speaking for myself I don't think the "sorting" the system does has to be anywhere close to as brutal and impersonal as it often is in many countries including Japan.
While Japan’s/many other countries approach is: “We intend our court system to be a perfect representation of our culture, history, and policy objectives. Therefore it should apply in every case, regardless of individual circumstance, so there is no escape hatch, because why deviate from a perfect process.”
The former is how you get the wildly inconsistent US approach to the criminal system, while the latter is how you get a kafkaesque nightmare (or worse, a system weaponized to intentionally target innocent undesirables, like El Salvador’s CECOT)
Both are simplified, none are perfect, of course. But I know which system I’d rather be accused under.
But essentially, somebody else sent her a package with something illegal in it that she didn't ask for. The police took her passport for a few months and searched her house. After a few months, she got her passport returned to her, she left Japan temporarily, but when she came back, they arrested her "to ensure [she] wouldn't flee while they finished the investigation".
She also mentioned it was "the most normal type of thing you can think of"; it might have been something like pseudoephedrine/Sudafed. That's a common over-the-counter drug in other countries but it's very illegal here in Japan (unless it's under 10%, or you buy it from Japan)!
Edit: Importing pseudoephedrine above 10% concentrations is illegal, but you can legally buy some higher concentrations over-the-counter while in Japan.
> She also mentioned it was "the most normal type of thing you can think of";
This doesn't really answer the question, though. It's frustrating to try to interpret these stories with a lot of writing and video describing everything except the crucial detail about what the charges were for.
I don't think she's trying to withhold information to avoid contaminating the case because she's spilling other details all over the place that could be used to influence the case. Yet the key piece of information that is supposedly "the most normal" isn't revealed
Is it really a crucial detail though? As someone having lived in Japan for a long time, I see no reason why we can not discuss the fact that civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking without resorting to "Do they deserve it in light of what they were suspected for?". I personally see no reason why suspects can not deserve decent sleep, meal, bedding, etc. even if they may be Shoko Asahara himself.
For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
If I had the police over, was an ass, had them come back, was an ass again. Then at some point they’re going to just think I’m the person that’d run away while they conduct their investigation.
I’m sure bad policemen exist in Japan, but all the ones I’ve met have been very friendly and reasonable.
Literally the central trigger point of the story.
> For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
Then I can see why you're not interested in the details
The fact that you and other insist on this really gets at the crux of this whole problem. There are two notable positions on criminality and punishment: yours, which is broadly that the justice system exists, at least in part, to deliver righteous punishment on the deserving, and the position of those appalled by the treatment here, which is that the purpose of the justice system is primarily to protect people, and then to deliver predictable, proportionate punishment of those found guilty to disincentivize criminal behavior. If you think that torture of someone detained but not found guilty might be justifiable if they're accused of a sufficiently heinous crime then you have an illiberal position that can and will be used to enable abuse of the criminal justice system to inflict extralegal punishment on anyone for any reason.
the administive pretrial detention is also pretty common, especially nowadays with the ICE craze.
nobody should be treated like this, agreed, but that doesn't mean that the process has no correlation to the level of guilt established and the certainty of it.
(the real problem is that it's way too many bullshit laws.)
So rationalizations of why it’s appropriate because the person was suspected of XYZ isn’t going to land with them and is largely irrelevant.
But I don’t mind playing devils advocate.
Should the justice system force confessions out of murderers? No, because they are only potential murderers and we have historically been able to get innocent parties to confess. People with vulnerability such as mental health problems are even more likely to give false confessions. The goal of requesting testimony should be honesty not compliance.
This logic applies as well the drug dealer, drug users, and jay walkers. It’s a moral principle disconnected from any specific geography so even if we are not Japanese and have no intention to interact with Japan, we can say they have not lived up to that principle.
Makes me think of TNG (Season 1, Episode 8). Death for walking on the grass.
What is Justice anyway?
Compared to what? European and other western countries with significantly higher crime rates?
Safety comes at a cost.
23 days of her life gone over dropped charges.
Due to their history, laws regarding stimulants are harsher in Japan than in many other places in the world [1] and this frequently takes people by surprise. Not that Japanese laws related to illegal drugs are lenient to begin with.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Japan
E.g. Contac 600 Plus can be found in basically all drug stores and it has 120mg of Pseudoephedrine, 100mg Caffeine, 8mg Chlorpheniramine, and 0.4mg of Belladonna Extract. It sounds like it'll actually be illegal to import into Japan, since 120/(120 + 100 + 8 + 0.4) is over 10%, but I've previously just walked into a drug store and bought a packet.
But, it's not unheard of to get randomly stopped by the police and searched, especially in touristy areas like train stations. Unless you're a Japanese citizen, you have to show ID, and although the searches are optional, most people agree to them.
For customs, usually a few people from each plane are searched.
Anecdotally, if you're a tourist, they're usually looking for medicine that was legal outside of Japan, but illegal within Japan, with small amounts leading to being detained for 23 days (like in this blog post). And if they decide to prosecute you, you'd probably get a suspended sentence (so no prison time), but you'd get deported and a temporary ban from coming back to Japan.
This seems ultimately like a very bad sales pitch for the tourism industry in Japan. I had thought I wanted to go to Japan but if I can accidentally, without malice, be thrown in a prison for 20 days that seems like a bad system.
I can't imagine the international relations of the ruling classes of various countries to the UAE would be trending in a positive direction if they arrested and punished people for walking off a plane with airplane bottles of alcohol.
For what it is worth different countries have vastly different recommendations for HBP and these drugs. I recommend discussing with the pharmacists in your country.
In the US I have been told it's a strict "never", in Ireland I was told that it wouldn't have a measurable effect on blood pressure. I've also measured my personal blood pressure (pre-hypertension to stage 1) and have not been able to measure a difference in blood pressure.
>Both cases were ultimately dropped and the second arrest was essentially tied to the first and shouldn’t have even been possible. But because of how the system works weather it’s a viable reason or not, they can still trap you in there for a time while the case is being reviewed. I met others who where there for shorter and much longer periods of time. The worst part was knowing i was innocent. After it’s all said and done you walk out and they act as if nothing happened. Not only was this was all extremely traumatizing but it cost me a HUGE of money that I really did not have and caused irreversible damage to my life.
The literal majority of people in US jails are there not because they have been convicted of anything but because they were given a bail amount they couldn’t afford to pay, which is a deliberate strategy by the courts when there is no justification to refuse bail. This can look like a $500 cash bail set on a homeless guy charged with resisting arrest (aka being arrested). Many of them are innocent and are trapped and have their lives ruined in exactly the way this guy describes. (We assume that many of them are innocent because when someone pays their bail, more than 50% of cases are simply dismissed as soon as they leave jail. The expectation is that they will just plead guilty because otherwise they are stuck in jail for months waiting for a trial).
This sounds like a very dubious assumption.
Even for smaller examples it happens all the time. Half the time you can completely get out of traffic tickets by showing up to court to plead not guilty. They dismiss the case because it's not worth the time.
I don't know what this means in the context of the US justice system. They're not paid on commission. They're being paid to be there no matter what happens.
They dismiss the case because the cop didn't bother to show up, or they didn't have any evidence against your defense. The reason you (as the person who got ticketed) don't show up to court is because you know you have nothing to say, or because it's not worth it to you when getting out of the ticket isn't enough pay for 3-4 hours of your time. The only reason you do show up is because you think you have a defense.
If you can't make bail, you're showing up no matter how stupid the charge is.
edit: I have personal experience (from a few decades ago) of being forced to face stupid charges. It was a game. They inflated the potential sentence to 3-5 years through silly charges designed for just that, and offered me a plea bargain of no time, no fine, and expungement from my record in 6 months. I pled guilty. If I hadn't been bailed out, I would have had to wait two weeks in jail for that moronic, depressing event. I pled guilty because it was easy to do, even if I hadn't done anything. If I had sat in jail for two weeks, I might have pled guilty even if it involved a week of jail time and a fine, just to get out.
Kalief Browder spent almost 3 years in Riker's Island awaiting trial just to have the charges dropped. People on here told me that showed that the justice system worked. I said that his life was destroyed by this, and he would probably end up dead soon. I got downvoted furiously. He'd killed himself 2 years later.
I always assumed this kind of behaviour was cherry picked on social media. How “normal” is it actually?!
In particularly bad neighborhoods in the US -- it happens sometimes.
Depending on what kind of life you live in the US, it could be completely foreign to you, or it could be normal.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/09/frontier-air...
Anyone who says this stuff isn't normal in America doesn't get out much apparently. Living in the US is nuts.
Except at Waffle House.
Bacically, it is not rare at all. Especially among certain American demographic.
I dont think so. I think innocent until proven guilty is the right way to go. Because all the police know is that he is accused of stabbing someone. Whether he actually did it or not, a court of law will decide that while he is present to be tried. Until then You cant punish someone like this over an accusation. You can deny bail if the person might be dangerous, but you cant punish them
This is bullshit and the japanese should be ashamed of having such a system while being considered a part of the civilized world. If this was china people would be rightfully losing their mind
There are many examples of police letting suspects go due to lack of evidence and then later discovering they let the wrong person go. These stories generate a lot of outrage in cases where there's public interest or a news story, but this is the reality of crime: You don't always have enough evidence to justify detaining someone, but the police's job is to quickly try to find enough evidence to find the right perpetrator
The charges could be very serious but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, because being charged (or even just arrested) is not the same as being convicted. The author of this post claims both of their charges were dropped.
So, what, let’s torture anyone that _might_ have done something “serious?” No judge, no jury, just if a cop thinks you might have done something, straight into a psychological torture cell for weeks and months while they think about your case? wtf
Also, your description of their experience as “not pleasant” just kind of blows my mind. Like it was a long line at the DMV or something.
Japan is probably worse than Northern Europe, but it's still pretty high on "if I had to be arrested, I'd rather it was here" list.
> You can not bring or keep anything including a bra or even your own underwear.
presuming the author is male.
Perhaps this is a regional thing, but in my experience, they absolutely do.
Mailer also successfully advocated for Abbott's parole. Six weeks later, Abbott stabbed to death the manager of a restaurant he was eating at after an argument.
But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
Nah, it's a principle that was brought in from English common law. E.g Blackstone's Ratio[0] was published at roughly the same time as the American revolution was playing out, and cited plenty of earlier formulations of the same principle. Habeas Corpus was codified in the Magna Carta, but predated it as a concept.
You're right than I'm oversimplifying it, and being very US centric.
That's a rather rose-tinted view of criminal justice here... I do hear that sentiment a lot here, but it's just words, and as you sort of hint at, the reality doesn't match the words.
> But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?
That's a big philosophical question. I argue that no, that's not ok, and I'd rather guilty people go free (and possibly hurt others) than put an innocent person behind bars.
My wife was traveling in Central America last year, and befriended another traveler from a nearby country. This woman told my wife that her country used to be fairly dangerous (both for locals and tourists) due to the proliferation of criminal gangs, but that the current president had mobilized the police/military and aggressively cleaned things up. She mentioned that a large number of innocent people got caught in the crossfire and and were now rotting in jail, but if that was the price of safety for everyone else, she was ok with it.
I had a very visceral negative reaction to this story, and found it disappointing that someone would hold that opinion. But I suppose it's a lot easier to take that stance when it's not you or someone you care about being falsely accused and sent to prison.
So I think that's another way to look at your question: would you be ok going to prison as an innocent person, as a known, understood, and societally-accepted side-effect of a safer society? If the answer is no, then you can't expect anyone else to do it. And even if the answer is yes, that's still a personal decision/opinion, and still can't expect anyone else to do it.
(For the record: hell no, I would not be ok with that.)
I have to imagine that from her point of view, it's a lot easier to take the stance that you'd rather see guilty people go free than put an innocent person behind bars when it's not your neighborhood with the dangerous criminal gangs....
In the US, just as in Japan, as soon as you are arrested they begin punishing you. If there were a real assumption of innocence, jail would be pleasant and comfortable, and if you were WFH you wouldn't miss a day. There is a material presumption of guilt, even if there's some sort of ethereal theoretical presumption of innocence.
Instead, you're in a horrible cell, eating horrible food, dressed in a humiliating way, treated in a humiliating way, and exposed to dangerous people. Unless you can pay a bond which you will never get back (because you are too poor to pay bail.) You haven't been convicted of anything. The fine you're facing might be lower than your bond, and the time you're facing might be shorter than the time you'd have to wait in jail to go to court.
I’m not familiar with this term. Is that an old thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
In Japan you can be arrested while an investigation is in process, only afterwards you will be indicted. Additionally, Japan does not permit defendants to post bail prior to an indictment.
Yes Japan has a really high conviction rate, but that is because they indict only cases were a conviction is likely.
Arrests don't need to lead to the person being indicted.
It also makes the act of accusing incredibly powerful, and you have to wonder what threshold there is and whose accusations matter, because this severe punishment for dropped charges feels extremely powerful.
If they confess, it counts as a win. If they don’t, you release them but it’s not a loss (as they were not charged).
So does the US.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/11/only-2-of...
By comparison, you might consider https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/14/fewer-tha... :
> In fiscal year 2022, only 290 of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases – about 0.4% – went to trial and were acquitted
"I spent a total of 35 days here. The first arrest was 3 days of processing, the initial 10 days followed by the 10 days extension for a total of 23 days before my case was dropped. But the same time my case was dropped my accusers found a another reason to issue a second arrest keeping me there for an additional 12 days!
Both cases were ultimately dropped and the second arrest was essentially tied to the first and shouldn’t have even been possible."
However, fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), you can't bribe officials. Japan is a society where it's difficult to get special treatment by giving money, not just to officials. If you try to use bribes, you'll only be looked down upon and put in a worse position.
The Stasi had beds, some sense of privacy through proper doors, and an hour a day one might spend outside in a small courtyard to get some sunlight.
However the level of psychological torture (sleep deprivation, hours of standing/sitting in a prescribed posture, hourly checks, ...) appears to be milder in Japan. The Stasi could take that pretty far once they weren't allowed to use physical torture anymore.
* Paolo fromTOKYO - "Why Japan Arrests Foreigners" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo (14m23s) [2019-08-16]
I can't logically think of any other lawfully worse punishment than what was described in the article. I don't know what they'd do for breaking rules in these situations, to be honest.
As a Mexican friend puts it for Mexico: Dress as the police should believe you.
The more bland the colors, the more you blend in and easier it is to flow through places.
I'd think a formal or business casual attire, with proper grooming, is a rather international signal that you're vaguely alright in your ways.
Anything specific you reckon otherwise for?
It's an obvious deficit in civilization itself that we can't have, or even seem to come up with, a principled justice system. We just intermittently ban specific atrocities and hope that eventually adds up to justice.
Being laxist towards criminals is not just being cruel to the victims to me: to me it is downright complicity with the criminals.
BTW: Japan happens to be one of the safest country on earth. A friend who's a pilot told me: "Tokyo is the only city in the world where I've women from my team (mostly air hostesses but also female pilot or co-pilot) go for a run at 3am". Now he didn't fly to every city in the world but I can name a great many cities where a fit woman won't go joking in yoga pants at 3am. And so can he.
Japan is safe because of other factors, not their conviction rate.
> they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people
And this is completely baseless.
For example, pretty much everything kulahan wrote about Japan in the grandparent comment is completely made up. Good narrative, emotionally aligned, feels true, stated with complete confidence, but absolutely fictitious.
There are many places women can run at 3am - Singapore, Bangkok, jut from top of my head.
And living in Tokyo, I woudn't advise any women to do jogging at 3am.
You can have western values while also having Japanese peacefulness.
So even if the prosecution decides to drop your case, you're already fucked -- this is not how proper justice system should work.
Hard disagree. Prison is the one you're not supposed to enjoy, jail is the place you use to keep people BEFORE they are judged.
A jail should limit the people held only as much as needed for the safety of the public and the handlers, but no punishment should be inflicted because no one's a convicted criminal (yet).
And in any case, prison should have a strong component of making the guilty person fit to live among others. A person that's been made to sit still staring at the wall for all their waking life for years is a person I definitely don't want as a neighbour, because there's no way they come out of that sane.
Jail's job is to keep you around during your legal process. You're not supposed to enjoy jail but it's not supposed to be torture, either. Torture does not belong in a civilized society and especially should not be used against those who have not even been formally charged. much less convicted, of a crime.
I agree, and this system is meant to hold people before they have evidence meaning it can hurt law abiding people.
Especially If you’re wrongfully arrested. “Optimizing society for law abiding people” means the opposite of what you think it means.
Also remember that this article is about an experience before any charges were filed, before she'd seen a court room, before she even had the opportunity to prove her innocence or be convicted. "You are not supposed to be in jail" is a laughably naive way of looking at this type of situation.
In this case, the author evidently _was_ a law abiding person, so the optimization failed, senselessly, likely out of a systemic effort to strike enough fear in the populace to over-index towards avoiding the possibility of this sort of situation. (Much like Singapore caning people for minor offenses.)
Whether or not you agree that such draconian punishments or processes are effective or fair is a different discussion, but this person was LITERALLY not supposed to be in jail, so how fair is it that they were removed from polite society for over a month in such poor conditions and at considerable expense?
They change their mind oh so quickly after
Sounds a heaven for someone who is ready for it but hell for those whose thoughts run amok.
from japan.
Just look at this thread. Yakuza? Taking umbrellas = go to jail? These people are morons. Worse, they think they are informed.
Maybe the BoJ didn’t burn enough money on US bonds this week or something. I can never understand the timing of these things or who is funding them.
So say if someone shoves you on a subway in Tokyo, do not ever shove back or do anything worse. Move away, get witnesses / evidence if you can, then report. (I've also witnessed an attacker try to exploit this rule, where they would intentionally injure themselves during the conflict and then claim that the defendant did it, so be aware of that)
Oh, and other things that can get you arrested:
- Not promptly returning someone's lost property such as a wallet. There was a case here in the newspapers recently.
- A review about a business that damaged their reputation, even if it was true (but you don't have 100% evidence). eg. "I got food poisoning from here". Be very careful what you post and say online as defamation laws are very different.
oh, and maybe not arrested, but get in trouble for: if you place your household rubbish into not your designated collection point, even though the point is the closest to your home. (Also don't get me started on the topic of sorting trash...)
The conviction rate was already terrifying, but this probably nails the coffin.
And this in a country where the yakuza is a sanctioned part of the society?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Current_situation
I do agree with the justice/prison system being incredibly scary, though!
Is this actually true or just fearmongering? I mean really, no chance to explain? Sounds as dumb as being forced into a psychiatric ward for wearing a pink shirt.
Absolutely hilarious if you have any knowledge of Japan. Your umbrella is the one thing that is absolutely not safe if you leave it unattended. Japanese will joke about this.
This really calls the whole article into question.
It’s also amusing to me that anything Japan related winds up on the front page of HN, but a similar article for a different country would probably go un-voted.
For those somehow actually considering this: make sure to check local laws, might be super illegal or at least inadmissible, (im)morality nonwithstanding. Although just because it's illegal, inadmissible, or immoral, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it of course.
Also maybe don't use the Meta glasses for this, even if you do decide to go for it. Not so sous anymore if you do.
Fact check... anyone can confirm this treatment is standard in Japan?
The facilities and food look slightly better (maybe because it's a detention centre in Tokyo), but it mostly matches. Although the mangaka seemed to have a much more positive outlook on it, probably because they could read all the Japanese books they wanted and speak to their cellmates in Japanese.
While it doesn't detract from the article's main point, that Japanese prison conditions are poor, but arson, murder, and jaywalking much? Overstaying your visa is a lot more egregious than the other infractions.
> Damn, I want to move to Japan now.
I know this is sarcasm, but going to Japan as a tourist and _living_ in Japan as a resident -- or the same of any country, for that matter -- are very different experiences. Some, but surprisingly little, of your experience from the former carries over to the latter.
How often does this actually happen in reality versus it being trotted out as a backstory after being caught?
I personally spent about 10 minutes trying to enter a car one time thinking my key was broken. At that point I realized I don't own fuzzy dice and was indeed just at a different car with the exact same exterior
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...
-The rampant sexual assaults -Child pornography still be prevelant -Tens of Millions overworked -Millions paid a wage that can't provide anything other than a slave life -The latter two leading to extreme levels of suicide -The fact the society as a whole isolates difference whether it be disability, or personality -OAPs needing to commit crime to live or committing crime to go to prison -There not being enough social care -The rampant racism against anyone else
Need I go on? If you think the above is wonderful something is seriously wrong. Japan has as many flaws as any where else and is the reason for many of them themselves.
Fucked up country I wish for the people to be free one day from their current fascist leaders.
Drugs? Petty crime? Homelessness? No other country comes close to managing these problems as well as Japan does, and Japan somehow manages to do this without descending into a 1984-esque surveillance state. Wander the streets of Tokyo at night and you will see zero drug-addicted homeless people. How many western cities could one say that about?
The Western mentality, especially in the USA, focuses on independent will. The government is not supposed to stop people from making choices that are bad for society or bad for themselves. In Japan, the mentality is that every person has an obligation to work with society and to fit in at all costs. The Japanese criminal justice system exemplifies that spirit, but it touches all areas, such as employment, personal relationships, behavior in public, talking to strangers, etc.
In short, if you want to have the advantages of Japan, you need to take it with the disadvantages as well.
It is definitely possible to hold people in detention without torturing them while also getting acceptable results.
The fact that many people opt to falsely plead guilty and get a reduced punishment in a society that highly values honor and saving face should say a lot about it.
There is something about seeing drug addicted zombies impossibly contorted in on themselves and swaying in the wind that appears very inhuman to me. If given the choice, pre zombification, of a false confession or life as a zombie I know which I would chose.
A bad article (if that's what it is—I haven't looked yet) doesn't make it ok to break them, and a bad thread doesn't either.
(* I don't mean you personally of course, but all of us)
We're not asking you (or anyone) to react in an emotionless manner—quite the opposite. The trick is to express the emotions in a somewhat different way - more sharing, less discharging, if that makes sense.
As for the article - I only skimmed it in the most superficial way but I think "what it's like to be in prison in Japan (from a Westerner's point of view)" was more or less certain to be interesting to this community, which is insatiable for things it hasn't heard about before.
Btw - you absolutely don't have to answer this, but are you Japanese? That's what the phrase "bashing your country as a whole" seemed to imply to me, and for some reason I was surprised. I guess it's because I talk a lot with HN's Japanese users (mostly by email) and your mode of expression is somewhat different. Normally I don't pry like this, so feel free not to respond!
For example, there's a very persistent claim about Chinese culture being so morally corrupt that Chinese people are known to intentionally kill pedestrians after hitting them with a car in order to avoid lawsuits[1]. In reality this was distorted from a sensationalized report of a single video of a car running over a pedestrian again, and then extrapolated as a fundamental truth about a culture of 1.4 billion people, cementing the perceived inferiority of Chinese culture to Western culture in the minds of readers. I could name literally dozens of cases of stories like these about CJK culture/governance that went viral in mainstream Western media.
I feel very strongly that this story fits into that genre. I do apologise for how strongly I reacted, but it's this kind of slander that really pushes my buttons and makes it hard for me to moderate my tone in the heat of the moment.
[1] "In China, drivers would rather kill you than injure you" -- Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/in-china-drivers-would-rathe...
To be clear, what the author said is that communicating in any language besides Japanese is prohibited with anyone. So if you share a cell with an inmate who speaks your native language, you're not allowed to speak with them in that language. I think that expected to be allowed to speak with inmates is not a sign of arrogance, and I don't know any other country that has a similar restriction.
Another issue is whether the author is allowed to communicate about her case in her native language. If she's asked to sign forms, make statements, or expected to understand her legal procedure, one would expect that the police would provide a translator to ensure that she's treated fairly. Certainly, that would be the norm in the West.
That's not the issue. At least in the US it is unconstitutional to bar inmates from speaking or communicating in non-English languages.
Likewise the US legal system is required to provide you an interpreter who can speak in a language you are proficient in.
Whether these rights are properly upheld in the US is another question but they are rights you are entitled to.
That's the main issue. These are rights that Americans are accustomed to and it's not always obvious to them when they leave the country that these rights aren't universal among developed countries.
This attitude is so unbelievably prevalent among native English speakers. "Obviously everyone should speak *my* language -- why should I ever have to learn another one?"
Seriously, what is so baffling about expecting an interpreter to be provided? Even if you do "speak" the language, this is not some everyday environment, and evidently not a good-faith one either. If I got into a similar situation in the US or similar, you can be sure as shit I'd ask for one too, even though I do believe I have a reasonable command over the English language in general.
I guess I see what you mean, but I feel there would have been a way to express this all better.