Suspicious deaths have suspiciously few autopsies in Japan
Japan has one of the lowest rates of autopsies in the developed world, with a mere one in ten deaths resulting in one, so to find out more about people’s opinions this survey by the Cabinet Office Japan took a look at the prevention of overlooking suspicious deaths.
Demographics
Between the 15th and 25th of July 2010 3,000 members of the public over the age of twenty selected at random from residency registers were approached for face-to-face interviews. Of the 3,000, 1,913 or 63.8% were successfully interviewed. However, no demographic information was given, although as with all Cabinet Office Japan surveys, they tend to attract much older people than the usual internet-based questionnaires.
I think it’s fair enough to assume that the police are relatively happy with the current state of affairs – writing things off as suicides (if you’re going to push someone off a building, take their shoes off first and line them up neatly afterwards) or accidental deaths keeps the crime rate and the paperwork down, but having said that, I feel that even if they did do more autopsies the Japan murder rate would still be one of the lowest in the world.
Note that as described in the text for Q2, the word that translates to “autopsy” means just an external examination. A further word in Q4 also translates to “autopsy”, but is further defined as the disection kind of forensic autopsy, the kind that most English speakers will associate with the word “autopsy”.
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