When she wakes up, uses the bathroom or creates a piece of art, she does so surveilled by guards who observe her through a ceiling-mounted camera.
“Prisoners are never told how or when they are being monitored, which creates a profound sense of fear and uncertainty,” Kazama, 68, said in a statement to The Japan Times.
As male guards are not prohibited from surveilling female prisoners, such exposure is particularly distressing for Kazama.
“My human dignity has been seriously undermined by the prison authorities,” she said. “Through this case, I want to bring attention to, and challenge, what I believe is an unlawful practice within the prison system.”
This assertion is the crux of a lawsuit she filed against the government in January. Represented by Teppei Ono, a lawyer and secretary-general of the nonprofit Center for Prisoners’ Rights, she is suing for ¥5.5 million ($34,600) in damages for psychological harm. Details of the case have not been previously reported.
It is the first time a female prisoner on death row has filed such a lawsuit. Male prisoners have filed similar lawsuits in the past, and won. The trial, which began on Friday and is expected to last around a year, is closed to the media.
“This is a significant violation of privacy,” Ono said of the surveillance.
In Japan, death row prisoners are held in small cells just by themselves and are, at times, monitored by bird’s-eye view video cameras, which are positioned to survey the entirety of the cell, including the washroom facilities. Footage from multiple cells is monitored simultaneously.
Tokyo Detention House guidelines dictate that CCTV surveillance can be used when detainees are at risk of suicide or self-harm, or when there is concern they may try to escape.
Kazama was sentenced to death in March 2001 by the Urawa District Court in Saitama Prefecture, along with her common-law husband, after being found guilty in a 1993 criminal case involving multiple murders and the abandonment and mutilation of corpses. The ruling was finalized in 2009 after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal. She is pursuing a retrial and maintains that she is innocent.
She “has never been disciplined, has never engaged in or planned self-harm, escape, violence, or other conduct warranting heightened monitoring, and shows no mental instability or made repeated complaints,” the complaint states, adding that what she is going through is beyond the scope of necessity.
Kazama had also been surveilled when she was housed at the Saitama Detention House but was not challenging the lawfulness of that surveillance in this case.
The defense, meanwhile, is arguing that the plaintiff is an at-risk inmate. On Sept. 12, 2001, when the plaintiff was admitted to the Tokyo Detention House, her death sentence and the emotional strain of court proceedings were factors that prompted authorities to label her a risk.
Outlining why she had continued to be surveilled in subsequent years, the government is painting a picture of a fragile mental state, citing the plaintiff’s communications with acquaintances in which she showed a sense of despair, for instance.
In 2018, the plaintiff wrote a letter describing death row executions of people she knew as distressing. She also expressed being upset about her sister’s death.
The detention center has conceded there were no rules that restricted male guards from viewing female prisoners. But it said in a statement that female prisoners were “generally” observed by female staff, and that guards do “not intentionally focus on scenes of changing clothes or excretion.”
Other countries have adopted widespread surveillance systems within prisons, but some areas are out of bounds. The United Kingdom’s Justice Ministry guidelines state CCTV “should not be sited in places where there is a heightened expectation of privacy, such as shower or toilet facilities.”
In American prisons, which at times surveil toilets and showers, inmates have the right to shower, change their clothes and use the toilet without being viewed by a non-medical staff member of the opposite gender, the Department of Justice states.
The Tokyo Detention Center’s rationale for monitoring toilet areas is that it is “considered a place frequently used for suicide attempts or self-harm.”
Ono described the case as unusual. There are documented examples of cases where male prisoners have complained about being observed by female guards, including in Russia and the U.S., but he said he had not encountered the reverse before.
“Such a serious breach of privacy — namely, the constant monitoring of female prisoners by male staff — is rarely brought before the courts, possibly because such practices are uncommon in other jurisdictions,” he said.
In October 2024, the Tokyo District Court ordered the government to pay ¥550,000 in compensation to a plaintiff, a death row inmate at the Tokyo Detention House, saying that 24-hour surveillance in a small cell is an infringement of privacy. The ruling was upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 2025.
Human rights bodies have also raised concerns — in 2024, special rapporteurs of the United Nations were among those who wrote a letter to the Japanese government questioning continuous CCTV use.
Suicides by death row inmates are rare but do occur on occasion.
On Jan. 26, 2020, a 71-year-old death-row inmate died by suicide in his cell at the Tokyo Detention House. Then on Jan. 31 this year, a 41-year-old death row inmate at the Osaka Detention House who was moved to a cell without CCTV and deemed not at risk, died by suicide in his cell.
There are around 100 prisoners on death row in Japan.
Source: japantimes.co.jp, Elizabeth Beattie, May 20 2026
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