It’s true. Japanese law works in reverse of US civil law. You are literally guilty until proven innocent. Prosecutors have abnormally high prosecution rates and have a lot of power in cases.

Japan has no Jury system, opting for panels of lay judges and one professional judge in most cases.

Pay very close attention to the conviction rate:

In the matter relating to Japanese prosecutors being extremely cautious, the paper found ample evidence for it. In Japan, 99.7% of all the cases brought to court resulted in conviction, while in the U.S. the figure is 88%. According to a cited research, in the U.S. the accused contest guilt in 22% of federal cases and 11% of state cases, while in Japan, the ratio is modestly less. The paper attributes this difference to greater predictability of the outcome in Japanese cases. This is due to two reasons. One is that it is the judge rather than the jury who determines the verdict. As judges “have seen it all before” and the lawyers on both sides “have seen them seeing it”, as they can read the judge’s previous ruling (which includes written reasoning for the previous verdict), the way that the judge thinks and argues is very predictable.
Secondly, Japanese trials before the institution of the current lay judge system, were discontinuous. The defense and the prosecutor would first gather in front of the judges and present the issue. Then, the court would enter recess and both sides would go back to prepare their case. As they reconvened on different dates, they would then present each case which the judges examined, the court would be put in recess again and each side would go back to gather further evidence. Some complex trials took years or even a decade to conclude which is impossible under jury system. During the questioning of evidence, judges were explicit about their opinions by the way they questioned the evidence, which gave greater predictability about the final verdict.
For this reason, the prosecutor is far more likely to bring in the case where conviction is assured and the accused is far more likely to settle.

Best way to learn the Judicial game of Japan? Phoenix Wright answers the questions best. It’s a parody of the judicial system and how it criminalizes people in the worst way. Phoenix Wright is a fun game, no doubt. But understand what it shows as the problems of finding justice in the system. Wealthy prosecutors, judges who don’t care, and an impossible turn around. Hell, another problem is how a defense attorney is unable to effectively cross examine the police. Whatever the police say is a gospel truth. Does that sound familiar?

The other problems are that Japan still hasn’t come to terms with sexual crimes, which are heavily biased against women:

Furthermore, in the context of the division of women into sexualised and non-sexualised groups, a victim of sexual assault must be from the group of non-sexualised women to be perceived as a true victim; rape of sexualised women is commonly trivialised (Burns, 2005: 31). Paradoxically, however, by admitting to the rape, women are admitting to sexual contact and therefore placing themselves within the devalued group of sexualised women (Burns, 2005: 19). If a woman has been the target for a sexual assault, she is assumed to be part of the group sacrificed for the protection of more deserving women, and therefore less deserving of protection.

So there are a lot of problems in Japan and its judicial system. The fact is, it’s a joke. It’s not about justice when you have such a high bar to prove your innocence.