Crime and Justice in Contemporary Japan

Crime and Justice in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Jianhong Liu

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 331969359X

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This book provides an important overview of key criminology and criminal justice concerns in Japan. It highlights similarities between the practice of criminology research in Japan, as well as important differences, with other areas of Asia and with the West. In previous decades, Japan attracted international attention as the only industrialized country where the crime rate declined along with a rise in urbanization and economic development. Currently, Japan still enjoys a declining crime rate (the lowest among major industrialized countries) and a study of criminal justice practices in Japan may provide important insights for other regions. Japan also experiences important contemporary challenges which are shared by other regions: 1. Japan has the highest proportion of people over the age of 60 in the world. For criminology, this means key challenges in the victimization of older people, as well as the challenges of an aging prison population. 2. Besides the United States, Japan is the only developed country that still practices capital punishment, and its rate has been on the rise in the past 20 years. 3. Japan has also introduced new reforms in its law practice, including the introduction of new trial formats. The research in this book provides a helpful overview for scholars interested in criminology and criminal justice in Japan to understand the key issues of concern, and present a framework for future research needs. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, international studies, Asian Studies, sociology, and political science.

Crime in Japan

Crime in Japan PDF

Author: D. Leonardsen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-04-14

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0230290310

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Japan is often described as an inclusive society, and yet the media reports record highs in crime and suicide figures. This book examines criminal justice in Japan, and questions whether Japan really is facing social malaise, or if the media are simply creating a 'moral panic'.

Offender Care and Support by Families in Contemporary Japan

Offender Care and Support by Families in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Mari Kita

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1000936392

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Because people’s contact with the criminal justice system comes in different shapes and forms, scholars are now broadening their analytical scope and examining the overall repercussions of criminal justice contact on families of offenders. Compared to Western societies, Japan is known for its lower crime rates and more pronounced use of informal social control. Thus, it offers a useful research site for examining how families in a low-crime society experience criminal justice contact and how they function as an integral part of the nation’s crime control mechanism. This book considers the role of the family in the lives of offenders and the criminal justice system in Japan. Looking particularly at gender and patriarchal power relations, it reveals how cultural notions of femininity prompt the criminal justice system to rely on women as its proxy. This book explores how families of offenders often step in to fill the voids left by criminal justice institutions and social services to provide offenders with all-inclusive care. The burden of supervising and rehabilitating offenders on top of the expectation to atone for the crimes also renders families ambivalent and ashamed. Whereas the state and criminal justice authorities tend to see offenders’ families as a crucial resource for prisoner reentry, this book highlights the necessity for addressing families’ needs before automatically assuming their support. It also pushes the boundaries of feminist criminology by showing how women can be affected by male criminality and male-dominated criminal justice institutions, other than as victims and offenders. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, Japanese culture and all those interested in learning more about the criminal justice system in Japan.

Forces of Order

Forces of Order PDF

Author: David H. Bayley

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1991-04-02

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0520072626

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In sharp contrast to the United States, Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and practically no police brutality or corruption. Urban congestion is often blamed for the soaring crime rate in the United States and the waning public confidence in the American police force, yet Japan's population per square mile is almost thirty times that of ours. In Forces of Order, originally published in 1976 and now thoroughly revised and expanded, David Bayley examines the reasons behind Japan's phenomenal success when it comes to public order. The Japanese police force is the world's most developed model of "community policing." To study it, Bayley conducted hundreds of interviews with police officers in Japan and spent many hours observing them on patrol, mostly at night. Making explicit comparisons between Japan and the United States, he analyzes Japan's record in policing and crime, the life of patrol officers, police relations with the community, police discipline and responsibility, the police as an institution, victimless crime, and deviance and authority in Japanese culture. The essential lesson of the book is that the incidence of crime as well as the nature of police practices is rooted in long-standing traditions that are profoundly related to fundamental matters of morality, culture, and historical experience. Bayley shows that the key differences between Japan and the United States do not stem from the economic or political structures of the two countries, but from the characteristic way in which people are expected to relate to one another and the sorts of social institutions that shape and reinforce those expectations.

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture PDF

Author: Ashley Pearson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-27

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1351470507

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In a world of globalised media, Japanese popular culture has become a signifi cant fountainhead for images, narrative, artefacts, and identity. From Pikachu, to instantly identifi able manga memes, to the darkness of adult anime, and the hyper- consumerism of product tie- ins, Japan has bequeathed to a globalised world a rich variety of ways to imagine, communicate, and interrogate tradition and change, the self, and the technological future. Within these foci, questions of law have often not been far from the surface: the crime and justice of Astro Boy; the property and contract of Pokémon; the ecological justice of Nausicaä; Shinto’s focus on order and balance; and the anxieties of origins in J- horror. This volume brings together a range of global scholars to refl ect on and critically engage with the place of law and justice in Japan’s popular cultural legacy. It explores not only the global impact of this legacy, but what the images, games, narratives, and artefacts that comprise it reveal about law, humanity, justice, and authority in the twenty-first century.

Popular Participation in Japanese Criminal Justice

Popular Participation in Japanese Criminal Justice PDF

Author: Andrew Watson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-10-26

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 3319350773

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This book analyses the mixed courts of professional and lay judges in the Japanese criminal justice system. It takes a particular focus on the highly public start of the mixed court, the saiban-in system, and the jury system between 1928-1943. This was the first time Japanese citizens participated as decision makers in criminal law. The book assesses reasons for the jury system's failure, and its suspension in 1943, as well as the renewed interest in popular involvement in criminal justice at the end of the twentieth century. Popular Participation in Japanese Criminal Justice proceeds by explaining the process by which lay participation in criminal trials left the periphery to become an important national matter at the turn of the century. It shows that rather than an Anglo-American jury model, outline recommendations made by the Japanese Judicial Reform Council were for a mixed court of judges and laypersons to try serious cases. Concerns about the lay judge/saiban-in system are raised, as well as explanations for why it is flourishing in contemporary society despite the failure of the jury system during the period 1928-1943. The book presents the wider significance of Japanese mixed courts in Asia and beyond, and in doing so will be of great interests to scholars of socio-legal studies, criminology and criminal justice.

The Japanese Way of Justice

The Japanese Way of Justice PDF

Author: David Ted Johnson

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 019511986X

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The major achievements of Japanese criminal justice are thus inextricably intertwined with its most notable defects, and efforts to fix the defects threaten to undermine the accomplishments."--BOOK JACKET.

Japanese War Criminals

Japanese War Criminals PDF

Author: Sandra Wilson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0231542682

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Beginning in late 1945, the United States, Britain, China, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and later the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China convened national courts to prosecute Japanese military personnel for war crimes. The defendants included ethnic Koreans and Taiwanese who had served with the armed forces as Japanese subjects. In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried Japanese leaders. While the fairness of these trials has been a focus for decades, Japanese War Criminals instead argues that the most important issues arose outside the courtroom. What was the legal basis for identifying and detaining subjects, determining who should be prosecuted, collecting evidence, and granting clemency after conviction? The answers to these questions helped set the norms for transitional justice in the postwar era and today contribute to strategies for addressing problematic areas of international law. Examining the complex moral, ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding the Allied prosecution project, from the first investigations during the war to the final release of prisoners in 1958, Japanese War Criminals shows how a simple effort to punish the guilty evolved into a multidimensional struggle that muddied the assignment of criminal responsibility for war crimes. Over time, indignation in Japan over Allied military actions, particularly the deployment of the atomic bombs, eclipsed anger over Japanese atrocities, and, among the Western powers, new Cold War imperatives took hold. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the construction of the postwar international order in Asia and to our comprehension of the difficulties of implementing transitional justice.

Japan as a Low-Crime Nation

Japan as a Low-Crime Nation PDF

Author: D. Leonardsen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-08-20

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0230511538

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Criminologists have despaired that modernization and crime are inseparable. The more modern we become, the more criminal. Japan has long been seen as an exception to the rule. The reasons for this, however, have not been well understood. In this book, the independent value of culture is explored to reveal new insights. The author finds that while it remains the case that crime reduction may come at some cost to individual autonomy, the 'West' can learn from Japan to reduce the social harm of too much freedom. Instead of endless crime prevention programs through 'social engineering', policy makers could pay more attention to sociological insights concerning responsibility, obligations and collective identities.

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