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Judgments on Court Interpreting in Japan: Ideologies and Practice

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Abstract

Japan saw a sharp increase in the number of non-Japanese residents and migrants during the period of its high economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This impacted on how the justice system provides language assistance to non-Japanese speaking background parties in investigative interviews and courtroom proceedings. While the number of defendants who received interpreter assistance in Japanese criminal trials hit its peak in 2003, quality of legal interpreting is still a serious issue. In this article, we discuss how the Japanese criminal justice system has approached issues in judicial interpreting in the last four decades by analysing how “court interpreting” and “court interpreters” have been represented in court decisions. By doing so, the paper aims to explore the judiciary’s ideologies about court interpreting and problematise these ideologies in looking towards improvement of language assistance in the Japanese legal system.

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Notes

  1. “Tsūyakunin kōhoshani” in Japanese.

  2. The examples cited in this paper are from 15 of the judgments.

  3. Cases are numbered chronologically rather than in the order they appear in the article.

  4. Our translation.

  5. The audio-recording of all interpreter-mediated trials was phased in from the early 1990 s and from 2019 recording will also be mandatory for investigative interviews to be used in lay-judge trials.

  6. Our translation.

  7. Translation of relevant parts of the booklet are our own.

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Cases Cited

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  2. Case 2, Osaka High Court, Nov. 10, 1989. 729 Hanrei Taimuzu 249–254.

  3. Case 3, Akita District Court, May 1, 1991. Gaikokujin Hanzai Saiban Reishū 1994: 9.

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  7. Case 7, Tokyo High Court July 20, 1992. 1434 Hanrei Jihō 140–146.

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  13. Case 13, Tokyo High Court, October 27, 2005. See Mizuno (2008) above.

  14. Case 14, Osaka High Court, October 22, 2010. See Watanabe (2012) above.

  15. Case 15, Tokyo District Court, January 24, 2011. TKC document number 25471397.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Ikuko Nakane

  2. Kinjo Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan

    Makiko Mizuno

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  1. Ikuko Nakane
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Correspondence to Ikuko Nakane.

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Nakane, I., Mizuno, M. Judgments on Court Interpreting in Japan: Ideologies and Practice. Int J Semiot Law 32, 773–793 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09642-3

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