ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that, as Chalmers Johnson wrote in 1972, 'In dealing with criminal cases Japanese police, procurators, and judges think of the confession as the "king of evidence"'. The two major cases covered by the Igarashi Futaba report are the so-called 'Cigarette-tin bomb' cases and the case of the 'Chief of Police's residence'. On 24 October 1969 a round-shaped 'Peace' brand cigarette tin packed with dynamite was thrown at the gate of the Riot Police barracks in Ichigaya in Tokyo. On 2 March 1976 a bomb attack was carried out against the Hokkaido Government Office. The remaining cases considered by Igarashi are of conventional crimes – murder, arson, robbery. Social control and the regulation of dissidence is achieved in contemporary Japan by much more subtle and diffuse methods, as Hidaka Rokuro and others have argued, and the role of police, procuracy and judiciary is slight in inducing political or spiritual reorientation.
