A woman drove the wrong way down a Tokyo expressway to escape the police, was arrested in Shibuya for carrying a knife, and was released the same night. I counted 778 comments: 95 to 5, with 48 percent of the vote saying shoot her, ram her, shoot the tyres. Eighty-nine comments said the police are soft. Twenty-nine, 2 percent of the vote, asked why the charge was the knife

What happened

At 7:57 on the evening of Wednesday 9 September 2026, FNN Prime Online published this story on Yahoo! News Japan. Before 9:30 that morning, a car driven by a woman was stopped on the shoulder near an interchange exit of the Keiyo Road in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo. Police spent about an hour trying to persuade her to move it. She suddenly drove off, entered the Tokyo Gaikan Expressway, an orbital motorway, and fled the wrong way down it. Patrol cars followed her the wrong way too, and one had its bumper smashed. The police judged further pursuit too dangerous and called it off. Before 3 p.m., on a street in Shibuya in central Tokyo, officers called to the woman through the window of the stopped car; she did not respond, and three of them dragged her out and arrested her on the spot on suspicion of violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law, the law that governs weapons. Part of the expressway was closed for a time, and nobody was reported hurt. The article says only "the woman"; it gives no name and no age. Neither does this note.

There was a follow-up that night. In a story published on Yahoo! News Japan at 9:48 p.m. by NNN, the Nippon TV news network, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police said that after a hospital examination they had released the woman the same evening because there might be a question about her criminal responsibility, that she had been admitted to hospital as an emergency, and that they would continue the investigation without holding her while assessing her mental state. The second half of the comment thread is filled with people who had just seen this.

When I read the article, this is what I thought:

日本の警察があまいってことと、道路交通法の違反ではなく重い刑一本だけになという典型的な生ぬるく犯罪者擁護体質。これが日本の警察司法なのですわ！

In English: this shows that Japan's police are soft, and that instead of the traffic offence they go for a single heavy charge, the typical lukewarm system that shields offenders. This is Japanese police and Japanese justice.

So my reading had two parts. One: Japan's police are soft. Two: rather than arresting her for driving the wrong way, a Road Traffic Act offence, they pinned one heavy charge on her, the knife, and that way of doing things is lukewarm and protects offenders. I counted how much of each the thread wrote.

95 to 5, and it is the thread at ten hours and 48 minutes, 778 comments

Across 778 top-level comments, the I relate button was pressed 30,257 times and the hmm button 1,668 times: 95 to 5. The previous note, 0041, was also 95 to 5; before that 0039 was 85 to 15, 0038 was 74 to 26 and 0037 was 92 to 8, so this is one of the two most lopsided threads of the last five. I counted at 6:45 the next morning, ten hours and 48 minutes after the article went up. The article showed 1,117 comments in total; 778 of them were top-level comments rather than replies.

The votes were even more top-heavy than usual. The top 10 comments took 76 percent of the vote, the top 20 took 88 percent, and the first-placed comment alone took 5,442 presses, 18 percent. Of the 778 comments, 170, 22 percent, had no I relate at all, and 339, 44 percent, had one or none. Most of what was written overnight had not been read by anyone by morning. In 68 comments, hmm outnumbered I relate.

Third place is the comment I shared: "Japan really is a gentle country", 3,401 presses

Third place, 3,401 presses. It also drew 119 hmm, the second-highest hmm count in the thread after the 354 on the first-placed comment. This is the comment I shared on X. Eleven comments, this one included, wrote about the patrol cars not getting scratched. The seventh-placed comment, 1,082 presses: the paperwork when an emergency vehicle so much as scrapes something is apparently a huge nuisance; unless they loosen that up, hopeless cases like this will only increase; they should look at introducing Tasers soon. The 17th-placed comment, 220 presses: patrol cars are paid for by taxes, so ramming that kind of person is fine; the idea that you must not damage them because they are taxpayers' property is about driving mistakes, not about crime prevention. Those 11 comments about scratched cars, paperwork and taxes took 17 percent of the vote.

First and second: "even if they had to shoot", "like America". Force took 48 percent

First place, 5,442 presses, 18 percent of the vote. It mentions shooting, but its core is: there is something behind this, dig it out. Comments guessing at why she fled, drugs, mental illness, other crimes, something hidden, numbered 68 and took 6,906 presses, 23 percent of the vote, and the first-placed comment is among them. The ninth-placed, 947 presses: someone who will not get out until dragged out is someone whose urine test will show something, or someone with mental troubles; a person in their fifties living an ordinary life does not behave like this; a harsh punishment is fine by me.

Second place, 4,763 presses. This is the core of the thread. Comments asking the police to use force, shoot her, ram the car, shoot the tyres, puncture them, carry Tasers, smash the window and drag her out, do it like America, numbered 236 and took 14,492 presses, 48 percent of the vote. That is 30 percent of the 778 comments. After second place come the fourth, 2,227 presses, puncturing the tyres so a suspect cannot flee ought to be permitted; the fifth, 1,921, fire or ram the car to stop it; the tenth, 878, just do it the American way; the twelfth, 533, firing at the tyres to disable the car should be allowed, and the Self-Defense Forces could have been asked to destroy the vehicle with live rounds; the 14th, 380, a Japanese police force that will not use the thing on its belt while people are put in danger, times have changed, use it freely against violent crime.

Counting by words: comments containing the words for firing, shooting, shooting dead or gun numbered 188 and took 52 percent of the vote. Ramming, 49 comments and 27 percent. Tyres or punctures, 31 and 10 percent. Tasers, stun guns or pepper spray, 21 and 4.2 percent. America or abroad appeared in 76 comments, 21 percent, almost all in the form: in America she would have been shot, in America they would have rammed her.

Comments that called the police soft, too gentle, timid, that asked why they negotiated for an hour, why they called off the chase, what the Chiba police were doing, without naming a method, numbered 81 and took 3,919 presses, 13 percent. Together with the 236 comments asking for force, 317 comments and 18,411 presses, 61 percent of the vote, were aimed at the police. The phrase "one hour" appeared in 37 comments; calling off the chase in 23, 9.0 percent of the vote.

Twenty-nine comments, 2 percent of the vote, questioned the charge: "shouldn't it be the traffic law first?"

Thirteenth place, 458 presses, the highest-placed of the comments that dealt with the charge. Comments questioning the charge, why not the traffic law, why not attempted murder, is a knife offence really all, numbered 29 and took 593 presses, 2.0 percent of the vote, 3.7 percent of the 778 comments. The words for the Road Traffic Act itself appeared in 10 comments, 1.8 percent. The 46th-placed comment, 31 presses: add attempted murder to the traffic offence and put her away for about six years. The 67th, 15 presses: if this ends as a mere traffic violation I will be astonished; driving the wrong way down an expressway with no intention of stopping is attempted murder, isn't it. A comment in 335th place with 2 presses: hang on, if they were arresting her on the spot, shouldn't it have been for the traffic offence first, then a search on arrest turns up the knife; what actually happened there. That is the comment closest to my own reading. Two presses.

Eighty-eighth place, 10 presses. Of the 29 comments that questioned the charge, this is the only one that offered an answer to why it was the knife. Its reading: a traffic offence gets you a citation, paperwork, not custody; so they arrested her for the knife in order to hold her. The part about the blade being something like scissors is this commenter's guess; the follow-up story says it was a kitchen knife. The words for murder or attempted murder appeared in 27 comments, 0.4 percent of the vote, in the sense that driving the wrong way is attempted murder and should be charged as such.

The release: 109 comments, 14 percent, on the 9:48 p.m. follow-up, with 3 percent of the vote

Comments reacting to the news that she had been released that night and admitted to hospital, why, this makes no sense, how can they let someone like this loose, numbered 109 and took 1,002 presses, 3.3 percent of the vote, 14 percent of the 778 comments by count. The words for release, non-prosecution, investigation without custody or bail appeared in 107 comments. The follow-up came out one hour and 51 minutes after the original, so these comments were written late at night, and part of the reason they have so few votes is that morning came before anyone read them.

The highest-placed among them is the 16th, 329 presses: she has been released and is in emergency hospital care, but the police are still investigating on suspicion of obstruction and other offences; if she is found criminally responsible, the maximum sentence for all the offences combined is about five years under the law; since nobody was hurt, a realistic sentence is one and a half to three years; because current law weighs the actual harm done, the term is likely to be short, and I strongly hope for tougher penalties for dangerous acts like this. The figure of about five years is this commenter's own calculation, and I have not been able to verify it. The 22nd-placed, 109 presses: another psychiatric evaluation? of course something will be found wrong with her, but a crime is a crime; publish her name and punish her under the law.

Words close to the phrase in my own reading, protecting offenders — soft on criminals, shielding criminals, favouring criminals, a criminals' paradise, getting away with it — appeared in 13 comments, 136 presses, 0.4 percent. A comment in 542nd place with 1 press: released for lack of criminal responsibility and straight into hospital; in today's Japan, no criminal responsibility is the strongest card there is; somebody please do something about this favouring of criminals. A comment in 232nd place with 4 presses: report her name; you expose the victims, so stop protecting criminals.

Name and nationality: 110 comments, 14 percent, none quoted

Comments demanding the arrested woman's name and face, no blurring, her nationality, numbered 110 and took 1,857 presses, 6.1 percent of the vote, 14 percent of the 778 comments. The sixth-placed comment, 1,455 presses, is among them. Of these 110, 68 comments, 5.6 percent of the vote, guessed at her nationality or asked about it, on the reasoning that a withheld name means a foreigner. Forty-two, 0.5 percent, asked only for her name and face. I count the guesses but do not quote them. Neither the article nor the follow-up says anything about her nationality.

475th place, 1 press and 3 hmm. Of the 778 comments, this is the only one that pushed back against the nationality guessing. It got more hmm than I relate, and I leave that as it is.

Six more comments, 6 presses between them, said the police went easy on her because she is a woman and a man would have been shot. Fourteen comments, 16 presses, mocked her age or sex. I counted both groups and quote neither.

Twenty comments, 0.4 percent of the vote, were cautious about the chase: "let her drive to a safe spot, then take her"

Fiftieth place, 26 presses. Comments cautious about the pursuit or about force, chasing a wrong-way car from behind is dangerous, she might have stopped if the police had not chased, there should be no car chases at all, do it the American way and more bystanders get hurt, the police judged correctly, numbered 20 and took 108 presses, 0.4 percent of the vote. The 39th-placed, 40 presses, said the patrol cars chasing the wrong way were far too dangerous and the road should have been closed further ahead, and drew 16 hmm. A comment in 611th place with no presses: there should be no car chases; with the number plate they can trace the car and pick her up later; police chases of runaway cars have killed many passers-by over the years. Zero presses.

Checking my own reading

"Japan's police are soft." Here the thread agreed with me. Words for soft, gentle, lukewarm, timid, half-hearted, walked over, pathetic appeared in 89 comments, 4,705 presses, 16 percent of the vote. The 81 comments that criticised the police without naming a method plus the 236 that asked for force make 317 comments and 61 percent of the vote aimed at the police. The third-placed comment I shared is among them. But what the thread wrote after "soft" was: shoot, ram. Comments containing words for guns or firing alone took 52 percent of the vote.

"Instead of the traffic offence, one heavy charge." The thread barely noticed. Twenty-nine comments questioned the charge, 593 presses, 2.0 percent of the vote; the words for the Road Traffic Act appeared in 10 comments, 1.8 percent. The word for the knife law appears in 46 comments, but most of them just repeat the article's phrase, arrested on suspicion of violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law; only some of them ask why. One comment, 88th place with 10 presses, answered the why, and its answer runs opposite to mine. I saw pinning one charge as lukewarm. That commenter saw it as the police getting serious: a traffic offence cannot hold her, so they held her on the knife.

"A lukewarm system that protects offenders." "Japanese police and Japanese justice." Words for soft on criminals, protecting criminals, favouring criminals, a criminals' paradise, getting away with it appeared in 13 comments, 136 presses, 0.4 percent. But 109 comments, 14 percent of the thread, were angry at her release that night. Their share of the vote was 3.3 percent, because the follow-up came out at 9:48 p.m. and those comments came after it. By count, one comment in seven asked why she was released. The thread's version of "justice" was two words: released, and, will they even prosecute.

So the check comes out half right. The thread did call the police soft. It did not talk about the charge. And what it asked for was not a straighter legal process but a gun. In the previous note, 0041, on a road-rage arrest, one comment in 94 blamed the police for not enforcing the rules. Here, 61 percent of the vote was about the police. Whether a Japanese comment thread talks about the police depends on whether the police are the story.

For readers outside Japan: the knife law, arrest as a way to hold someone, criminal responsibility, and "hmm"

The knife law. The Firearms and Swords Control Law, jūtōhō for short, forbids carrying a blade longer than six centimetres in public without a legitimate reason. The follow-up says the woman had a kitchen knife in the car. A comment in 80th place, 12 presses, says an acquaintance kept a mountaineering knife, a keepsake from a friend who had died, in the glove box and was arrested for it; apparently even a small one is not allowed. If you live in Japan, do not leave a knife in your car.

Arrest as a way to hold someone. Japanese police handle most traffic offences not by arrest but by citation: paperwork, then a fine and points on the licence later. Taking someone into custody on a traffic offence alone is difficult, as the 88th-placed comment says. So there is a practice in Japan of arresting on some other offence in order to hold the person, and then investigating what you really want to investigate. One comment in this thread explained that practice. I called it lukewarm. That one comment read it as the police getting serious. Which of us is right is not something I can count.

Criminal responsibility. This is the phrase in the follow-up. If a person's mental state is found to have deprived them of the ability to tell right from wrong and act on it, in Japan they are not held criminally liable, or the sentence is reduced. The woman was released, on the grounds that there might be a question about her responsibility, and admitted to hospital. Fifty-two comments used words for mental state, responsibility or psychiatric evaluation, almost all in the sense of: punish her anyway.

"Hmm." Yahoo! News comments have three buttons: I relate, I see, and hmm. Hmm is the mildest way of saying you do not agree. The hmm button was pressed 1,668 times in this thread, 354 of them on the first-placed comment and 119 on the third. Of the 68 comments where hmm outnumbered I relate, the biggest hmm count, 105, went to a comment saying humanity is headed for extinction. The thread's least liked voice was the one that changed the subject.

What this thread wrote. 95 to 5. Force, shoot her, ram her, 48 percent of the vote. Add the police are soft: 61 percent. Something hidden behind this: 23 percent. Give us her name and nationality: 14 percent of the comments. Why was she released: 14 percent of the comments. Questioning the charge: 2 percent. Caution about the chase: 0.4 percent. The thread at 6:45 the next morning, 778 comments.