Japan placed 66th in the 2025 press freedom rankings announced by Reporters Without Borders on Friday, the lowest among the Group of Seven major countries.
I think the two things that negatively surprised me the most about Japan when I moved there and started talking to people:
First are that the press has less freedom than you’d expect for a democracy. I learned this after becoming friends with a local member of the Communist party.
Second, that although the police on the street are incredibly kind and helpful, often going out of their way for people, if you do get arrested, the treatment of prisoners is pretty bad. They are very good at getting confessions, even out of innocent people.
That second part is huge tbh. Japan doesn’t have any rights to an attorney, and interrogations are allowed to last for literal days at a time. If you’ve been kept awake for three days straight with no food and minimal water, while cops rotate through in shifts, you’d sign whatever piece of paper they put in front of you just to be able to get out of the interrogation room. They have a near 100% conviction rate, many of them by confession due to prolonged interrogation.
And yeah, Japanese prisons are brutal. You have basically no free time. You’re expected to sit quietly in your cell until breakfast. They slide breakfast through the bars, and you eat in your cell. Then you sit quietly in your cell until lunchtime and you’re allowed to go to the yard. They line you up single file, where you silently march to the yard. You’re expected to kneel silently in the yard and meditate for your 15 minutes of sunlight per day. Then you return to your cell and sit quietly until dinner.
The Japanese have a saying which roughly translates to “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down” and prison exemplifies this; Any deviation from the expected “sit quietly, don’t move, don’t interact with each other” is punished swiftly and brutally by the guards.
A conviction rate of over 99% and 99.8% in criminal cases strongly suggests a combination of not pursuing justice in many cases, outright framing people when necessary, and abusive behavior by police to force confessions for the need to solve cases.
I can speak somewhat passable Japanese and I’ve made a few close friends in Japan on trips there and online but I don’t think I could live there given some of the serious systemic issues with their justice and political system. That said I’m coming from America so who the fuck am I to talk I suppose
Japan being a democracy is somewhat debatable. The LDP is so entrenched that the people really have very little say in what happens. All discussion is within the party. The party is the ruling class.
At this point I’m jealous even of non-Democracies with somewhat competent leadership
And then we shocked-Pikachuface when china, japan, and south korea start working more closely on trade
In the last election, the LDP lost 68 seats for a total of 191 seats where 233 seats are needed for a majority, meaning it at least needs to make a coalition.
The CDP, which is described as center-left gained 52 seats for a total of 148 seats, and is the second largest party.
The United States ranked 57th, down by two positions, and was second to last among the G7 countries.
Hold my beer…
For real. I feel like the US will “win” in reaching the bottom of press freedom very soon.
Personally I’m anxiously awaiting the 2025 Economist Democracy Index.
