Meet Waku Miller, a Buddhist monk standing against Hostage Justice.

I spoke Waku Miller in a three-part interview that covers hostage justice in Japan. A US citizen, Waku has resided in Japan for more than 40 years. He works as a writer, translator, and Buddhist monk. What brought Waku to my attention was his participation in initiatives for calling attention to the evils of Japan’s so-called hostage justice: prolonged detention of criminal suspects before and during their trials. In this video, we discuss what hostage justice is through the lens of the Olympus case.

I first learned about Japan’s hostage justice practices through Carlos Ghosn’s arrest and subsequent treatment by our criminal justice system. During my time in parliament, I had no idea that suspects could be detained prior to indictment and that confessions were coerced in exchange for release. I didn’t know Japan had a presumption of guilt in practice, presumption of innocence on paper. The Hostage Justice Project has held three meetings since Carlos Ghosn’s arrest in November 2019 to appeal to parliamentarians as well as non-Japanese media. We aim to spark legislative criminal justice reform by raising awareness both in and outside of Japan.

More on Waku Miller:

A native of Arizona, has resided in Japan since 1978. He took Buddhist vows in 2009, and his days begin and end in the zendo (meditation hall). Waku continues to earn his living, however, as a writer and translator. He has published two English translations of seminal works about the Toyota Production System: The Birth of Lean (Lean Enterprise Institute) and Competing to be Really, Really Good (International House of Japan). Among Waku’s numerous other book translations are Pho to n, a book-length poem by the poet Fujiwara Akiko (Gean Tree Press); Bearing Witness, a biography of the pioneering Japanese journalist Matsumoto Shigeharu (International
House of Japan); and Taction, a work about the theory and history of calligraphy (International House of Japan). He published a Japanese-language collection of interviews with authorities on sociopolitical issues in contemporary Japan in 2015 as Nihon shakai no kozo in wakeiru [Probing the structure of Japanese society] (Kodansha). Waku is active in efforts to end the Japanese practice of extorting confessions from criminal defendants through prolonged detentions.