> Literally the central trigger point of the story

The fact that you and other insist on this really gets at the crux of this whole problem. There are two notable positions on criminality and punishment: yours, which is broadly that the justice system exists, at least in part, to deliver righteous punishment on the deserving, and the position of those appalled by the treatment here, which is that the purpose of the justice system is primarily to protect people, and then to deliver predictable, proportionate punishment of those found guilty to disincentivize criminal behavior. If you think that torture of someone detained but not found guilty might be justifiable if they're accused of a sufficiently heinous crime then you have an illiberal position that can and will be used to enable abuse of the criminal justice system to inflict extralegal punishment on anyone for any reason.

It doesn't matter though. Nobody should be treated like this, especially not before their guilt has been proven.

For most people, the critique of Japan is because their own countries used to operate jails in this way.

So rationalizations of why it’s appropriate because the person was suspected of XYZ isn’t going to land with them and is largely irrelevant.

But I don’t mind playing devils advocate.

Should the justice system force confessions out of murderers? No, because they are only potential murderers and we have historically been able to get innocent parties to confess. People with vulnerability such as mental health problems are even more likely to give false confessions. The goal of requesting testimony should be honesty not compliance.

This logic applies as well the drug dealer, drug users, and jay walkers. It’s a moral principle disconnected from any specific geography so even if we are not Japanese and have no intention to interact with Japan, we can say they have not lived up to that principle.

Fair I suppose. I guess one can treat this either as a personal story (although frustratingly scattered across multiple places and incomplete) or as a description of a single instance of an arrest in Japan.

Is it a crucial detail? Can you explain why you need to know what she was arrested for, given that she says the charges were dropped?

You can love Japanese culture and still call them out when they are clearly uncivilized. We're talking about a culture largely defined by the same people that did Nanjing. It's quite ironic that the same culture that claims to be pacifist has no problem inflicting psychological torture on prisoners. Asia in general has this problem.

Makes me think of TNG (Season 1, Episode 8). Death for walking on the grass.

What is Justice anyway?

Not for the ones you buy in Japan, since those are legal.

But, it's not unheard of to get randomly stopped by the police and searched, especially in touristy areas like train stations. Unless you're a Japanese citizen, you have to show ID, and although the searches are optional, most people agree to them.

For customs, usually a few people from each plane are searched.

Anecdotally, if you're a tourist, they're usually looking for medicine that was legal outside of Japan, but illegal within Japan, with small amounts leading to being detained for 23 days (like in this blog post). And if they decide to prosecute you, you'd probably get a suspended sentence (so no prison time), but you'd get deported and a temporary ban from coming back to Japan.