Getting away with murder: Is Japan’s low autopsy rate hiding killers?
No autopsies were reportedly performed on six of those eight at the time of death, a situation experts say is indicative of Japan’s flawed system, warning the country’s low post mortem exam rate may mean criminals are getting away with murder.
In 2014, 11.7 per cent of “unusual deaths” – the term used for cases in which cause is not immediately clear – resulted in autopsies, National Police Agency (NPA) figures show. That compares with 40 per cent in England and Wales in 2014. And in Sweden, autopsies are performed on 95 per cent of “unclear” deaths, according to the National Board of Forensic Medicine.
Ministries are running away from their responsibilities and they’re avoiding budget requests. As a result, the autopsy rate does not improve
“The low autopsy rate means there is a higher chance crimes are being overlooked,” said Hirotaro Iwase, professor at the forensic medicine department of Chiba University.
Despite government pledges to increase the autopsy rate to 20 per cent by this year, the figure remains around half that. Iwase attributes this to a shortage of forensic specialists as well as budget cuts at public universities, which carry out the majority of the crime-related procedure.
Some university forensic departments are on the verge of collapse – 20 out of Japan’s 47 provinces have only one professor performing autopsies, according to the Japanese Society of Forensic Medicine.
In the Kakehi case, police initially determined her previous partners died from illness. Her arrest only came after police discovered her most recent husband, 75-year-old Isao Kakehi, died from cyanide poisoning and began looking into the earlier cases and found a pattern.