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Have you been to Japan? I spent two and a half weeks there, spending time in various parts of the country, and I think I can count the number of police officers I saw on one hand.
"Police state" isn't just a function of uniformed officers. I don't totally agree with the description, but if you consider "fearing the police" a critical part of a police state, I'd point to the absurd conviction rate and the idea that you'd just expect to get arrested if you started any sort of disruptive crime as indicators that the Japanese largely "fear" (probably uncharitable, more like "respect and comply with" in practice, I think) law enforcement.
As compared to the US where I've seen no shortage of people doing (minor, mostly non-violent) crimes right in front of police officers.
The Japanese conviction rate being so high is mostly a result of two factors:
The Japanese take confession cases to trial (the confession is presented as evidence), so they show up as "conviction" in Japanese statistics whereas they show up as "not a trial" in almost every other country's. Because confessions are very common, this drastically inflates Japan's conviction rate.
Japanese prosecutors are actually quite reticent about pressing charges without a confession, so cases that might show up as "acquittal" in another country tend to show up as "not a trial" in Japan.
Japanese culture is indeed hilariously disgusted with criminals (the best example is probably the manga/anime Death Note, in which a vigilante who decides to kill all the criminals - but who can only kill the ones who the justice system has already caught - is presented as morally ambiguous rather than an utter lunatic), but AIUI their justice system isn't actually as vicious as you'd expect from that (note that Japan does not have jury trials, which is probably a good thing).
inaccurate, there are some cases shown where Death Note vigilante kills criminals before they could be caught
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They obtain the confessions by coercion, basically what detective novels call "the third degree". You can be held without bail for 23 days at a time, and if you don't confess in that time they can re-arrest you for another 23 days on your way out of the jail.
I mean, false confessions are a problem with the Japanese system, yes. Was thinking about editing that in but you pre-empted me.
Note that while they do push pretty hard, it's still AIUI hardly peine forte et dure (either in the original "food and water on alternate days" sense or the later "lol we crush you with weights" sense).
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