Inside Japan’s Biggest Prison in Final Days of Forced Labour
Entering Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo, I was greeted by the imposing timber gate salvaged from Sugamo Prison where allied spies and war criminals were held and executed until 1950. I was then escorted to a heavily guarded windowless room. As a large metal door slammed shut behind me, the one opposite swung open.
Fortunately, this was just a half-day media tour organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan to see the country’s biggest prison that also has the largest population of overseas inmates, and I was pleased to see some myths debunked.
It might not make such dramatic column inches, but the clean, basic conditions, calm atmosphere and orderly conduct was impressive. Yes, eye contact is strictly controlled. Except for the volatile tattooed dwarf, an officer explained that glaring at visitors is overlooked in case a rebuke becomes provoking. Talking, sitting and walking are also highly regimented.
Contrary to many dramatic reports, Japanese prisons do have air-conditioning and heaters, but mostly limited to communal corridors and the workrooms, cells and care facilities for the elderly, ill and mentally or physically disabled. The dearth of such comforts is due to budget restraints, not for punishment, according to Fuchu Prison Warden Hiroyuki Yashiro. And fans are plentiful.
“It is easy to feel sorry for inmates, but also to forget their crimes and victims,” said one officer who requested anonymity. Those who refuse to work or follow rules must endure solitary confinement where they sit or kneel silently in formal style. Their punishment, after all, includes, “hard labour.” But it’s hardly digging ditches or cracking rocks in the harsh noon sun. Inmates who make leather products and assemble plastic clothes pegs for sale at the Ministry of Justice in Kasumigaseki and merchandise for two famous baseball teams (no photos allowed) are provided seats, fans, workbenches and safety gear. Others learn woodwork, metalwork, sewing, printing and maintenance of the premises and vehicles. The most sought-after tasks are in the laundry, kitchen and garden.
This wasn’t enough for former US Green Beret Michael Taylor, who in June whined to media about his “hard labour” at Fuchu, including the “tantamount to torture” tearing of paper into small pieces while he sat on a chair with no back rest. Officers say this exercise helps cognitive and physical functions of fingers for older inmates and makes for sale daruma—dolls that symbolise luck and perseverance. But let’s not forget about the accused foreigners who now probably won’t get bail because Taylor and his son helped Carlos Ghosn flee Japan while the former chairman of Nissan Motor Corporation was on bail awaiting trial for financial irregularities.
“The rules will change in June 2025, however, when forced labour is outlawed,” said warden Yashiro. The revised 1908 Penal Code will instead focus on prisoners’ release—rehabilitation, treatment and education—rather than punishment, he explained.
Prisons will no longer provide inmates with eight daily hours of work, but instead will fill their time by counselling and treating drug addicts and sex offenders; offering elderly inmates physical and mental therapy; encouraging inmates to quit gangs and to be sociable and communicative to improve their career, relationship and accommodation prospects.
The revised penal code may also allow for more flexibility in identifying candidates for welfare, education and psychology and a less coercive hierarchical relationship between officers and inmates, a recent Ministry of Justice report said.
Who is within these walls? Built in 1935, the 262,187-square-metre Fuchu Prison with a capacity of 2,668 inmates employs about 600 officers who oversee adult males sentenced to between three and 10 years, about one-third linked to organised crime, or yakuza. About 350 are foreigners of 50 nationalities, mostly Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Malaysian, Thai and American, for whom services are available in 10 languages.
Yashiro scoffed and his officers looked bemused when asked if prisoners could make phone calls and how many had escaped. One officer proudly pointed to Fuchu Prison’s lack of overcrowding, violence, drugs and hierarchy among inmates. The visiting rooms—much smaller than in the TV dramas, joked an officer—allow inmates to greet family, friends, lawyers or others up to five times a month, with good behaviour. Visits are monitored by officers and held in Japanese behind glass windows via telephones.
The daily routine is wake up at 6:45; breakfast 7:05; start work 8:00; lunch 12:00; resume work 12:40; finish work 16:40; dinner 17:00; evening break 18:00; bedtime 21:00. “Cells have restricted local TV broadcasts and Chinese and English-language radio programs, including by the US military,” said the prison’s International Affairs Office Principal Yutaka Hayashi. He added that meals cater for fussy eaters, religion, vegetarians, allergies, ailments and the elderly, with menus and samples displayed in corridors.
Inmates can choose from 22,000 library books (most in English) and study religion, poetry and calligraphy; others gain qualifications in real estate transactions, accounting and even handling dangerous goods.
Officers were keen to promote Fuchu’s efforts for the 22% elderly of the prison population. Younger inmates are trained to look after them, and they receive care qualifications on release. We also walked briskly through the “troubled” section of angry, unpredictable and uncooperative inmates locked in single cells. Officers asked us to avoid staring through the barred windows at inmates, some of whom were visibly depressed, unstable or upset. One walked around naked, others glared morosely at the walls or ceilings.
What happens when inmates are released? Almost all foreigners were not residents in Japan when arrested and would likely be deported if they were. Some 314 foreigners have been transferred to prisons in their home country since 2004 when bilateral treaties were first signed with some nations, including 19 in 2023. Japanese inmates, meanwhile, can register on release with the government’s Hello Work scheme that provides jobs and benefits to the unemployed. Officers concede, though, that most firms are reluctant to employ ex-cons, and the recidivism rate is the same as in comparable countries, about 40-50%.
I’m no expert in criminal justice systems, including so-called hostage justice in Japan, but I would feel safer and happier in Fuchu than any of the prisons I have visited in Thailand, South Africa, Jamaica, UK or the Philippines. There was the former death row inmate in Bang Kwang Central Prison, near Bangkok, whose favourite video from the library was the escape drama Midnight Express; Nelson Mandela’s single drab cell from 1964 to 1982 on Cape Town’s Robben Island and Pollsmoor for six years which I visited for the Big Issue; a British drug smuggler still in shock after just being sentenced in Montego Bay; Shepton Mallet Prison-turned-tourist attraction in southwest England with 400-plus years of gruesome history and celebrity inmates such as London gangsters the Kray twins; and Japanese yakuza awaiting trial in Manila City Jail who openly rented firearms from guards for target practice to beat the boredom.