Economist, Dec 5 2015

choi

(1) The (a) and (b) describe what a suspect and a prisoner, respectively, go through. There is no need to read (a).
(a) Japan’s criminal-justice system | Extractor, Few Fans; An overreliance on confessions is undermining faith in the courts
(In Japan "Police and prosecutors may hold ordinary criminal suspects for up to 23 days without charge—longer than most other rich countries allow even terrorist suspects to be detained. Access to defence lawyers during this period is limited. In theory, suspects have the right to remain silent; but in practice prosecutors portray silence as evidence of guilt.  * * * and 23 days is plenty of time to extract [a confession]. Interrogators sometimes ram tables into a suspect, stamp on his feet or shout in his ears. Interviews can last for eight hours or more. Suspects are deprived of sleep and forced into physically awkward positions" but no torture)


(b) Japan’s prisons | Silent Screams; Why you might prefer a Bangkok jail to one in Chiba.
http://www.economist.com/news/as ... hiba-silent-screams

Quote:

"Talk is banned for much of the day. Reading is only sometimes allowed.

"Toshio Oriyama is a former restaurant owner who spent 22 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit. “You weren’t free to do anything except breathe the air,” he says; even to stand up required a guard’s permission. Mr Oriyama had to sit cross-legged much of the time, in some pain * * * A common punishment for misdemeanours was solitary confinement, where Mr Oriyama had to sit facing the door all day long.

Note:
(a) title
(i) Of course, “silent screams” in the title is an oxymoron.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron
(ii) The Chiba in the title refers to 千葉刑務所
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/千葉刑務所
(view the photo only)
, which is located at Chiba, Chiba  千葉県千葉市
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiba,_Chiba
(section 1 Etymology)
(A) The “chi” and “ha” are both Japanese pronunciations of kanji 千 and 葉 (“ha” → “ba” to soften pronunciation when “ha” is preceded by another syllable).
(B) Chiba prefecture 千葉県 is eastern neighbor of Tokyo.

(b) Toshio ORIYAMA 折山 敏夫 was arrested and indicted in 1985, convicted and sentenced for a 20-year term in 1998, had his first appeal rejected in 1991 and final appeal (to supreme court) rejected in 1995, and was released from prison in 2007.
(c) “Death-row inmates have it worst. They wait in solitary confinement, sometimes for many years. They are not told when they will be executed; prisoners wake each day not knowing if it is their last. Sakae MENDA 免田 栄, who was exonerated of murder and released in 1983, once described how when the guards stopped each morning at his door 'your heart would pound.' ”

Japanese English dictionary:
* sa-ka-e 栄え 【さかえ】 (n): "glory; prosperity"
(d) “Ichirō Hara 原 一郎, chief producer of ‘The Scoop Special,’ a news show from TV Asahi テレビ朝日 [where katakana テレビ is pronounced "terebi"] that, unusually, draws attention to wrongful convictions. Japanese tend to put themselves in the shoes of crime victims, not of suspects, says Kana SASAKURA 笹倉 香奈, a [female] law professor attempting to overturn wrongful convictions.”

choi

(2) This issue has a Technology Quarterly (coming out every quarter) titled "New materials for manufacturing." The third item is

Carbon Fibre: Dark Arts; Carbon-fibre composites are making light work of aeroplanes, and now cars too.
http://www.economist.com/technol ... r-manufacturing#s-3