172 - Death Under Mysterious Circumstances

 

【変死体、henshitai】

[Literally, 'strange corpse'. Also, this one is a doozy.]

Whenever a person dies, their death is classified depending on whether the cause is from disease or other causes. In the case of death due to illness, if the disease had been previously diagnosed by a doctor, only after receiving a death certificate from a physician for this cause of death and submitting it to the ward office, will it finally be recognized as a death caused by illness.

However, in other cases, such as sudden death from acute heart disease, accidental death, suicide, death from an unknown disease, manslaughter, or homicide, the death is classified as an unnatural death and must be reported to the police for an autopsy in the presence of a police officer to determine the cause of death. Even if a doctor diagnoses the death as due to illness, the ward office is prohibited from accepting the death certificate if there is even the slightest suspicion that the victim died an unnatural death.

According to Article 1 of the Regulations on Autopsies, an unnatural death is:

1. Death due to external circumstances.

2. Death of an unknown cause.

(Includes deaths due to illnesses the victim was not taking medical care for, since the relationship between the cause of death and the illness is unclear.)

3. Death where abnormal situations occur before or after death.

(The so-called death under mysterious circumstances. In police terms, it means "a death with an unknown relationship with a crime".)

In other words, a death under mysterious circumstances is a death where it is unknown if it was due to natural causes such as disease or a crime. Corpses that fall under this criteria but are believed to have no relation to crime become the subject of administrative inquests, and if the cause of death is still left unknown, they may be subjected to an administrative autopsy.

Bodies that died under mysterious circumstances are subjected to judicial inquests, while corpses suspected of being a result of a crime are subjects of judicial autopsies.

The institutional system for dealing with unnatural deaths is named the Medical Examiner System, which is currently in effect in five cities: Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe.

In other areas, however, this system is not yet in place, and autopsies are not easily performed. Therefore, some have called for its establishment in other prefectures post-haste for the sake of criminal investigations.