Three unrelated cases surfaced around the same time—foot-and-mouth virus found in meat carried through New Chitose Airport, a Chinese man's 5-million-yen fraud case dropped without charges, and a viral clip about how foreign inmates are treated—and got lumped together as evidence of leniency at the border, in the courts, and in prisons. The facts behind each case, however, are far from settled.
On the same day, an Osaka prosecutor declined to charge a Sri Lankan student in an attempted-murder stabbing, and a Shizuoka prosecutor declined to charge a South Korean man who had lived in Japan illegally for 26 years. The brief, formulaic explanations drove anger over transparency, but the public record does not establish the sweeping 'broken justice' and 'soft on foreigners' conclusions many drew online.
A Korean-national woman in Osaka was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for dropping a flowerpot from a 6th-floor apartment, landing right beside a passerby — but prosecutors reportedly declined to indict. 'She admitted it, so why no charges?' became the rallying line, with anger at the justice system quickly merging into Japan's broader debate over foreign residents.