Kirk here with an English-language article and some comments about Ms. Linh’s exculpation by the supreme court.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230324/p2g/00m/0na/032000c
First, I’d like to point out that I learned today that Google news searches are not as good as I thought they were. It seemed odd to me searching for “Kumamoto” via Google news failed to bring up any articles on this case so I tried DuckDuckGo. Well, DuckDuckGo was MUCH better. So, from now on, I’ll check DuckDuckGo when looking for articles to share here.
Second, I read some Japanese-language articles on the ruling today and felt I came to understand something that I’d missed so far so I’d like to share that. From the outside, rulings found Ms. Linh guilty because the way she handled the tragedy was, supposedly, not in keeping with public sentiment (in Japan) about what it means to treat a corpse with proper respect. This seemed very odd to me, particularly because I didn’t think it was reasonable to expect Ms. Linh to know about what is considered normal and proper in Japan. It turns about that this criterion, while not clearly spelled out in the criminal law itself, has long be applied in cases like this as a matter of judicial custom. Here’s how it is presented on Wikipedia:
公衆の敬虔感情、死者に対する敬虔感情 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%BB%E4%BD%93%E6%90%8D%E5%A3%8A%E3%83%BB%E9%81%BA%E6%A3%84%E7%BD%AA
And here’s a DeepL translation: Public pious feelings, pious feelings toward the dead
Naturally, Ms. Linh’s lawyers complained that this was too vague and not clearly defined. But, conversely, the fact that the criterion is rooted in “public feelings” may have made the supreme court justices that much more inclined to consider the many voices of support for Ms. Linh and the wide-spread public disapproval of her convictions. So, I think this is a case where taking a few minutes to sign a petition really may have made a difference. :)
