Japan’s Abusive ‘Hostage Justice’ System Persists

Newspaper Ad Marks International Wrongful Conviction Day

Riyo Yoshioka
Senior Officer, Asia Division

Iwao Hakamata, a former professional boxer who was sentenced to death in 1968 for the 1966 murder of a family of four, was acquitted on September 26, 2024 following a retrial. His sister, Hideko Hakamata (C), holds a banner reading "innocent man, not guilty verdict" as she arrives at the Shizuoka District Court that day. © 2024 Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

To mark International Wrongful Conviction Day, the “End ‘Hostage Justice’ in Japan” project, co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch and Innocence Project Japan, has placed a newspaper advertisement to raise awareness of Japan’s abusive “hostage justice” system, which severely violates human rights and continues to result in countless wrongful convictions across the country.


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Yukio Hashiguchi and Satoru Iwashita have kindly created this ad pro bono. The ad reads:Never let the criminal free. Getting locked up in a detention facility. They are pressured to confess during such detention that they don’t know when it will end - and end up confessing. There is only one way to end hostage justice. And please raise public opinion to revise the justice system. End “hostage justice” in Japan. © Yukio Hashiguchi and Satoru Iwashita

The ad states that the authorities pressure criminal suspects in custody to confess during their indefinite pretrial detention, and they end up confessing to crimes. Many wrongful convictions have resulted from this practice. The ad highlights the need to raise public awareness to revise the justice system: “End ‘hostage justice’ in Japan.”

Under “hostage justice,” criminal suspects are denied the rights to due process and a fair trial. Authorities detain suspects for prolonged periods, sometimes months or years. They may be detained for longer periods if they do not confess. Authorities subject suspects to harsh interrogations to coerce confessions from them during the pre-indictment detention. Defense lawyers are not permitted to be present during interrogations, and the questioning does not stop even when a suspect invokes their constitutional right to remain silent.

The case of Iwao Hakamata highlights the dangers of the practice. Hakamata, a former professional boxer, was arrested on August 18, 1966, for murdering a family of four. Following harsh interrogations by the police and prosecutors, he confessed nearly a month later. Based on his coerced confession, Hakamata was indicted and subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence and was eventually acquitted—58 years after his arrest—on September 26, 2024, following a retrial.

Despite such miscarriages of justice, Japanese authorities still coerce confessions during the pre-indictment detention period.

Today’s newspaper ad features 3,477 “正” characters. In Japanese, each “正” when counting represents the number five, symbolizing the 17,388 days Hakamata spent wrongfully imprisoned and how justice gets more distorted the longer incarceration lasts.

The Japanese government should not wait any longer to end “hostage justice” once and for all.