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Why you might prefer a Bangkok jail to one in Chiba
LIKE the rest of Japan, its prisons are strikingly clean, safe and orderly--and as quiet as retirement homes. Yet reformers who have surveyed some of the world's penal hellholes say that Japan's jails rank among the cruellest--for the psychological toll they take on inmates.
Past inmates describe draconian rules. Eye contact with prison wardens is often forbidden or, when allowed, has to be accompanied by a smiling demeanour. Some compulsory prison work can be mind-numbing--folding pieces of paper into eight and unfolding them, for instance. 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...