In an essay posted Aug. 23 on Magazine9, activist Karin Amamiya wrote about “someone the same age as me” (48) named Hiroshi Yamada who is currently on death row for the murder of an elderly couple in Nagoya in 2017. Prior to his sentencing in March, Yamada had already received a death sentence last year when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Consequently, the court-ordered death sentence had little meaning for him because he already knew he would die in prison. “So what?” he thought when the judge sentenced him to hang, according to an article Amamiya read in the magazine So written by Yamada. The article was in the form of a memoir, and Amamiya, whose life work is helping people who live at the margins of Japanese society due to economic hardship, found his story to be not only affecting, but representative of a situation that is all too common in Japan: the ex-con who is prevented from reentering society due to systemic and cultural barriers. 

Yamada, it turns out, is not his birth name, which was Matsui. After he was sentenced to death, Matsui was adopted by another man on death row named Koji Yamada, for reasons that Amamiya does not explain. Amamiya admits that she was unaware of Yamada’s case, even though he has already posted various essays about his life and situation on the blogsite Note through various people on the outside. Amamiya went back and read these essays and was struck by the chain of events that led to the murder for which Yamada received the death penalty. He attributes the killing to a sudden burst of resentment when the male half of the couple he killed, who lived near him and knew he was collecting government assistance, said something to the effect of “It must be nice living so well when you don’t have to work.” 

Yamada has been in and out of prison most of his adult life. He was born in 1974 to a single mother who worked in bars and was always dating married men. Yamada started working right after junior high school, and was kicked out of the house he shared with his mother and sister after he stole some of her then-boyfriend’s alcohol. He lived on his own and worked a string of jobs in the electrical trade, often clashing with superiors and having to change employers. Then, when he was 24, he was hit by a truck, causing permanent damage to one of his legs. After his release from the hospital, he tried to move back in with his mother but she refused, so he slept under the overpass of a train line. There, he attempted suicide once and, desperate for cash, stole a wallet. He was caught and spent time in jail awaiting trial. It was the first time in his life that he had a secure roof over his head and guaranteed three meals a day. He was released when he was given a suspended sentence, but soon, at the age of 30, he was arrested again, convicted, and sent to prison. After 3 months he was paroled, and the only work he could get, given his criminal record and his bad leg, was in the sex trade working mainly for underworld types. Carrying out his job often entailed illegal actions, and he was arrested again for theft and given a 5-year sentence. After completing his debt to society, he was released and tried to become a taxi driver in Tokyo. He even managed to pass the test the first time, but his leg made it difficult for him to work long hours and he had to quit. 

He turned to his underworld acquaintances but even they couldn’t provide him with enough work to get by, so he applied for welfare, and the official who handled his case at the local government told him he first had to have an address and steered him to so-called hinkon bijinesu (poverty business)—shady companies that find lodgings for people on government assistance as long as they sign over most of their payments to the company. Obviously, the local governments and these companies are in cahoots, because hinkon bijinesu is an already well-documented racket that preys on desperate people. Through the company he contracted with, Yamada was given personal space in a room with others in exchange for most of his welfare payment. In the end, he had only ¥20,000 left over per month. He eventually got sick of it and left the lodging, thus effectively forfeiting his welfare payments. It occurred to him that the only place left for him was prison, so he shoplifted some confections from a supermarket and reported himself to the nearest police box. They told him to go away, and so he went to a bar and stole a handbag, and then reported himself to another police box, but the woman who owned the handbag didn’t want to press charges. He ended up spending only 10 days in jail.

His mother then allowed him to move in with her and the man she shared it with. Yamada applied for welfare again, and, as with the first time, was steered to a hinkon bijinesu. He stole ¥4,000 worth of pachinko balls and was arrested “on site,” and finally got what he wanted, another stint in prison, where he attempted suicide twice. Upon release he went right back on welfare, but this time he lived in a shelter, which had lots of rules. Even hinkon bijinesu was better, so he signed over his welfare payments to another company. 

As Amamiya notes, the cycle of poverty and incarceration became open-ended and broke Yamada’s will before he committed murder on March 1, 2017. On that day, he had received his welfare payment and went to play pachinko, where he lost much of it. On the way home, he ran across the elderly couple, who were his neighbors, and the man made fun of Yamada’s pastime. He probably didn’t mean anything malicious, but it was the last straw. Yamada went to his apartment, retrieved a kitchen knife, and went to the couple’s dwelling and killed them. He then took ¥1,227, which is what got him the death penalty—murder in the commission of a theft. 

While his case was still in the courts, Yamada’s condition deteriorated rapidly starting in 2021. Eventually, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that metastasized to his liver. The prison physician didn’t do anything, probably because by the time he saw Yamada the cancer had advanced to stage 4. In Amamiya’s experience, “detention center employees don’t take [detainees’] illnesses seriously.” Yamada’s lawyer had determined with the help of professionals that his client was “intellectually disabled,” and tried to use that in his defense, but the judge rejected it, saying that Yamada was capable of taking responsibility for his actions. 

Coincidentally or not, there was another recent essay in Magazine9 about the difficulties ex-cons face in trying to make anything like comfortable lives for themselves after completing their prison sentences. The writer, Mihoko Kobayashi, works for an NGO that provides shelter to people in dire need, and she feels that in addition to there being no effective safety net for formerly incarcerated individuals in Japan, these people also face “social punishment” for their misdeeds that follow them forever. During the pandemic, the situation was especially serious, because her organization’s shelter was constantly filled while the number of people applying for space because they had lost their residence due to unemployment increased week by week. In particular, she mentions foreigners who initially came to Japan to apply for refugee status and were placed in an immigration facility, which is basically a prison. Some of these individuals were given so-called provisional release, which means they could be in Japan while their immigration case was studied but were prohibited from working or collecting public assistance. They had no place to go and would often apply for space at her organization’s shelter.

She talks at length about one individual she calls A-san who was an ex-convict. A-san was young and able and willing to work, but in order to get on his feet after being released, he needed a place to live. When he mentioned this to the applicable welfare office, they suggested one of the 5 independent support centers that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government runs in the city, and which almost always have vacancies, but when his case worker checked he learned that it wasn’t possible because of the arrangement that the government made with neighboring residents. 

The support center project was started in 2000 as a means of providing temporary housing for people who are “struggling for whatever reason” economically but are able and willing to work. The idea is to give these people free room and board while they secure employment, and once they do and have saved enough money to rent a place of their own, they will leave. Each center can handle up to 70 residents, but Kobayashi says that they usually don’t contain more than two dozen residents at any one time. Residents cannot stay more than 6 months.

But reality rarely fits the ideal. Only 40-50 percent of the residents actually get jobs and move out according to the plan, and many of these people don’t actually find dwellings of their own but rather live at their workplaces, which means if they are contract workers they will lose their place to live when their contract is up for whatever reason. The remaining 50-60 percent of residents end up leaving the centers without securing jobs; or they just leave without giving notice one way or the other. Many return, but, in principle, they are limited to a maximum of three separate stays. 

But one self-limiting aspect is that the centers themselves move every five years, a condition that is meant to put neighbors at ease so as to allow the Tokyo government to build these facilities in their communities. Public facilities that house or address welfare cases, be they orphanages or shelters for battered women, tend to receive pushback from local residents, who think that such facilities reduce property values or otherwise pose some kind of danger. Such groups also protest against homes for disabled persons, so forget about halfway houses and homeless shelters. Local governments usually have to bend over backwards to get such facilities built. The Tokyo centers, for instance, have no windows (so that neighbors don’t have to look at the people inside), and tend to lack anything that would outwardly  indicate their purpose. 

So it is isn’t surprising that these facilities would refuse to accept ex-cons. It’s likely a condition of their being allowed to construct a facility in a certain neighborhood, according to Kobayashi. In the end, Kobayashi found a place to stay for A-san, a private guest house, so he was able to receive welfare while he looked for work. However, if he wants to move out and into a legitimate rental apartment, A-san would need a guarantor, but guarantor companies almost never take on ex-cons. Neither do realtors. Often the best they can hope for is a sublet. Jail certainly isn’t better, but it’s definitely easier.