Japan Casts Envious Look at U.S. Crisis Management : Asia: Slow responses contrast with quick arrest in Oklahoma blast. Some say issue is a difference in culture.

Japanese critics often portray the United States as a declining society riddled with guns, drugs and a slackening work ethic. But to judge from recent press reports, Americans still do at least one thing well: managing crises.

When a killer earthquake hit Kobe in January, commentators here criticized their government for a fumbling response and held up the U.S. performance in the Northridge temblor a year earlier as a model of leadership. Now Americans are being touted again--this time for a quick and effective response to the deadly bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

“If you compare us with America’s Oklahoma bombing terrorist incident April 19, the slow-motion pace of Japan’s investigation . . . is clear,” the Daily Gendai tabloid newspaper recently declared in an article bemoaning the pace of the police probe of the March 20 poison gas attack against Tokyo subway riders that left 12 dead and more than 5,500 sickened.

Just as key differences in the Kobe and Northridge quakes make simple comparisons difficult, analysts here say the two terrorist probes can’t really be likened. Still, as Japan begins to grapple with the reality that it is not as safe as it once believed, some officials are looking to the United States’ crime fighters and crisis managers for lessons.

“I don’t want to say this in too loud of a voice, but the FBI, CIA and military intelligence organizations are amazing,” said Yukiharu Fujinaga, a Teikyo University law professor and former prosecutor. “The Japanese people have to develop a crisis consciousness. Until now they thought public safety was free, like water and air, but it costs a lot.”

Fujinaga and others said the FBI’s quick arrest of a suspect, the information sharing among myriad U.S. agencies, the array of legal tools available to police and prosecutors and solid political leadership distinguished the U.S. response from Japanese efforts.

Such comparisons come amid public frustration over the pace of the probe into the subway attack and into the Aum Supreme Truth religious cult at the center of suspicion. Police are reportedly close to arresting guru Shoko Asahara and other top leaders on murder charges but have come under criticism for a slow response.

While U.S. authorities brought in a suspect barely 48 hours after the blast, police here have not yet arrested one person in direct connection with the subway gassing seven weeks ago. More than 150 people arrested so far have been charged with unrelated violations, such as trespassing, slander and carrying a butter knife.

Just hours after the Oklahoma blast, U.S. authorities found the key piece of evidence: a truck axle that had carried the bomb. Then they traced its origin and identified a suspect using composite sketches and widespread questioning.

The U.S. investigators have hit many dead ends in their search for a second suspect, known only by a police sketch and the moniker “John Doe No. 2.” Still, in Japan, police do not appear to have made any sketches and have not released clear descriptions of any suspects.

Early reports that a man who planted the gas on one subway car had been hospitalized after succumbing to fumes have never been confirmed, and any mention of the mystery man has disappeared.

In addition, it is unclear whether police have found a smoking gun linking the cult to the attack. Police have not found any sarin, the nerve gas believed to have been used in the subway gassing, on Supreme Truth premises despite extensive raids. But in unconfirmed reports, the Yomiuri Shimbun said that police intend to arrest Asahara for murder, based on evidence that the plastic bags used in the gas attack were identical to those made by the cult.

Other reports have said that police were planning to charge Supreme Truth members with manufacturing poison gas for mass murder, a lesser crime unrelated to the actual subway incident that carries a maximum of two years in prison.

U.S. authorities have provided a working theory of the Oklahoma crime: In court papers, they assert that the suspect, Timothy J. McVeigh, is an anti-government extremist obsessed with the 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex. McVeigh may have bombed the Oklahoma City building as revenge, officials speculate.

But police here have not explained why a religious cult would unleash a terrorist attack on Japanese subway riders--especially when its key enemies, under the Armageddon scenario envisioned by Asahara, are the United States and the Christian West.

The contrasting probes reflect differences not in competence, however, but in approaches to police work based in culture and history, experts say.

For starters, they say, Japanese police probably know a lot more than they’re letting on--but are notoriously tight-lipped compared with the relatively gabby Americans. U.S. laws require more disclosure, and officials seem more willing to be quoted by name than do Japanese officials, who have remained faceless and give only limited leaks to an exclusive club of police reporters.

Japanese police also tend to take more time and amass far more information before making arrests than do their U.S. counterparts, analysts say.

Experts here say it is not uncommon to investigate six months before making the first arrest; by those standards, they say, the subway probe is humming along.

Jimmy Sakoda, a supervising detective with the Los Angeles district attorney’s office who has frequently worked with Japanese police, said they might send hundreds of people to one crime scene, fan out over far more territory and gather detailed evidence that U.S. authorities might find unnecessary.

“They work their behinds off,” said Sakoda, who spent 26 years with the Los Angeles Police Department. “I’ve seen vehicles measured for the size of the tire, how much air is in it, how the vehicle traveled at certain speeds, all recorded on videotape. It’s almost like they need a preponderance of evidence to present their case.”

Exactly so, said Fujinaga, the former prosecutor. He said Japanese police won’t turn a case over for prosecution until they’ve gathered enough evidence to essentially ensure a conviction. To police, giving prosecutors a case that is not virtually airtight means troubling an outside agency and signals failure of their duty--both anathema in Japan, experts say. As a result, the conviction rate is more than 98%.

“To Americans, the arrest is the starting point,” Fujinaga said, “but to the Japanese, it is the finish.”

Such characteristics are evident in the poison gas probe. No arrests have been made, but police have reportedly compiled massive amounts of information and seem to have successfully cracked Supreme Truth’s internal organization and chain of command--two essential elements to the successful prosecution of a conspiracy, Fujinaga said.

Another distinct difference between U.S. and Japanese approaches is the heavy reliance on confessions as the “king of evidence” here. The widespread arrests of cult members on unrelated charges seem aimed at producing confessions, which police manage to obtain in more than 90% of all cases.

“The Japanese mentality has always been that if you do something wrong, ‘fess up and take the medicine,” said Sakoda, the Los Angeles detective. “But given our constitutional restraints, we can’t always get a confession. We’ve got to show overt acts beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But the Japanese reliance on confessions is controversial. Amnesty International and other human rights groups argue that police not infrequently coerce false confessions from people under physical and psychological duress. Unlike in the United States, suspects can be held for questioning--without the presence of an attorney--for up to 22 days and longer if police rearrest them on different charges.

One reported reason for the arrest of Supreme Truth attorney Yoshinobu Aoyama last week was to stop him from visiting jailed members to remind them of their right to remain silent.

But if limits on attorney privileges give Japanese police a decided advantage, they are hampered by a lack of legal tools that their U.S. counterparts take for granted. Wiretapping, undercover operations, criminal immunity and plea-bargaining are banned or heavily restricted here.

Analysts say police haven’t particularly needed such tools because their close relationship to the neighborhoods they patrol give them a highly effective network of informers. Working out of neighborhood police stations, officers collect data on all residents, routinely visit them and encourage reporting of any strange people or events.

“The Japanese are very effective at any crime that occurs in the neighborhoods--murders, burglary--because whatever people see they will share with police,” one intelligence source said. “But in the subway case, they have no neighborhood society to fall back on, and it’s very hard getting information. That is the biggest handicap police are facing now.”

The growing sophistication of crime here--terrorism, international drug smuggling and gunrunning--has prompted Japan’s justice minister and others to propose studies on whether to broadly legalize wiretapping and other investigative methods. In a limited number of narcotics cases, police have already won court approval for wiretapping and other methods to trace drug routes.

But the resistance to broader police tools is strong. “Opinion is coming out that we should introduce American-style investigative tools, but I think the evils outweigh the benefits,” said Minoru Morita, a political commentator.

“Japanese society is built on trust, but wiretapping and undercover operations would create mistrust of each other,” he said, adding that such mutual suspicion was fostered before World War II by repressive police.

In any case, some commentators here say the difference in legal tools between Japan and the United States is not the biggest problem.

Japan lacks a centralized investigative agency such as the FBI, making it difficult to coordinate probes that cross several prefectures. The sarin poisoning last year in Matsumoto, the subway incident in Tokyo, the raids on Supreme Truth facilities in Yamanashi and various arrests around the nation are handled by different local police agencies, and information is not always coordinated, analysts say.

And some people lament that Japan lacks a clear commander in chief. While President Clinton has scored points for his decisive actions and firm statements to the nation in numerous appearances after the Oklahoma blast, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama has been virtually invisible.

Takashi Kakuma, a commentator on international affairs, said the political culture may be the reason. Clintonesque statements by a Japanese prime minister might be considered showboating or encroaching on police turf, he said.

But others see it differently.

“American political leaders put all of their strength into defending their democracy and people’s lives, and will use all methods to deal with terrorism that threatens this,” the Daily Gendai said. “But Japan’s politicians under Prime Minister Murayama are different. That is reflected in the slow-motion investigation that hasn’t even arrested Asahara.”

* MEMORIES IN OKLAHOMA: Families, friends of victims visit site of bomb blast. A25