Regarding the March 1 article "Top prosecutor opposes fully taped interrogations": Even if a criminal suspect's statement is not recorded in its entirety, the timing of any confession will be documented. And if this evidence is used in a public trial, then all parties will be aware of who confessed. Therefore, the quoted remarks and logic of Japan's prosecutor general (Haruo Kasama) seem frighteningly confused.
The collateral damage from unrecorded interviews is that innocents are being subjected to procedures that erroneously incriminate them. It is not hard to imagine how this is happening. In any case, the issue at hand is not the extraction of confessions, but rather the protection of the innocent.
This is not a hypothetical issue like the one described by the prosecutor; it is a real issue in which innocent people have had their lives wrecked.