The Asahi Shimbun's online newsmagazine, Webronza, recently featured a conversation between former Asahi reporter Mieko Takenobu and sex-goods purveyor Minori Kitahara. They discussed the latter's brief imprisonment after being busted for displaying "salacious material" at her store associated with the controversial "vagina artist" Rokudenashiko. Most of the conversation was about the salacious material, but they also talked about jail.
Kitahara was kept in a cell at a Tokyo detention center with three other women, two of whom were Chinese being held for immigration violations. One had been working on a farm and the other at a dry cleaners. Kitahara learned that more than half the women in the center were non-Japanese being held for overstaying their visas. Takenobu, whose specialty is labor issues, explained that almost all the foreigners arrested in Japan are overstayers though the media makes it seem as if they are "criminals," and therefore a danger to the public.
Kitahara said that the foreign inmates at the detention center are treated poorly — held for long periods without proper medical attention or the right to speak to outsiders in their own language, and since they can't understand the rules of the place, they are always breaking them inadvertently and getting into trouble. Nobody is prepared when they go to trial, because the explanation of their rights is incomprehensible. "Even I didn't understand it," she said.