Disagreement with “Punishing foreigners, exonerating Japanese” (Debito Arudoul, Japan Times)

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090324zg.html

>> For example, consider the Hiroshi Nozaki Case. In 2000, Nozaki was caught flushing a Filipino woman’s body parts down a public toilet. However, he was not charged with murder — only with “abandoning a corpse” (shitai iki). That got him all of 3 1/2 years in jail. By 2008 he was stowing another dismembered Filipina corpse, that of Honiefaith Ratila Kamiosawa, in a train station locker.

>> We’ve had plenty of cases where Japanese men kill and mutilate Japanese women (e.g. Yoshio Kodaira, Kiyoshi Okubo), and they tend to get the hangman’s noose. Not Nozaki.

** Regardless of whether the victim is Japanese or a foreigner, Japanese law does not punish anyone for murder unless evidence of a murder being commited has been found.  Killing someone is a murder while poorly treating a dead body is another crime under Japanese law.  I think that in this case no one told the truth to the police because they are scared of the Japanese mafia taking revenge.  So, there is no evidence of the murder of the Filipina.

>> Hyperbole? Consider other crimes against non-Japanese women, like those of convicted serial rapist Joji Obara. His connection with the Lucie Blackman murder has been well-reported, particularly the botched police investigation despite ample material evidence — even videotapes of his rapes. Regardless, in 2007 Obara was acquitted of Blackman’s murder due to “lack of evidence.”

>> Obara did get life imprisonment (not death), since he was only charged with “rape leading to death” of nine other women (one of them foreign). But only after strenuous appeals from Blackman’s family was the acquittal overturned in 2008. Obara became guilty of “dismembering and abandoning” her corpse. Again, guilty of crimes to their dead bodies, not of making them dead.

** Joji Obara is Korean, he became a naturalized Japanese citizen in the middle of his life — just like the author of this article, Debito Arudou did.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucie_Blackman

>> Last week I called Chiba police to inquire about Ichihashi’s charges. An investigator entrusted with the case wouldn’t comment on specifics. Asked about the process of determining murder or abandonment, he said if the suspect admits “homicidal intent” (satsu-i), it’s murder. However, it’s unclear how at least one of the crimes shown on the poster is significantly different from Ichihashi’s, or how some suspects indicated their homicidal intent before escaping. Police did not respond to requests for further clarification.

** Some suspects prepared for a murder by buying a knife or making a plan.  And some suspects could be shown to have had a history with the victim involving trouble with money, love, business etc.  This shows that a criminal had homicidal intent.
I feel that this author is somewhat biased.