Tochigi ¨C On the outskirts of the city of Tochigi, around 30 women dressed in powder pink uniforms and white hats sit at long tables sewing flags and soft furnishings for a private client. The room is filled with quiet concentration.
The women aren¡¯t regular workers, but some of the 456 female inmates serving out sentences at Tochigi Prison, Japan¡¯s largest prison for women. Amid fewer inmates and rising costs to maintain the facility, the prison is scheduled to close in April 2028, with the current prisoners to be relocated.
But it is a microcosm of what female prisons?across the nation face: from the increasing foreign inmate population and rising recidivism to the higher percentage of mental health issues compared to male prisoners.
In Japan, there were 11 female prisons housing an average 3,637 women per day as of 2024, just a tenth of about 36,000 male prisoners. Of the prisoners nationwide, 7.6% were foreign nationals in 2024, up from 5.5% in 2015.
Cultural dissonance
Around a third of prisoners at the medium-security prison come from overseas, with Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai women convicted of drug-related charges making up the majority of this population, according to officials.
¡°The biggest challenge, when there are differences in cultures and customs, is communication,¡± said Hirotsugu Hori, of the prison¡¯s general affairs division.
From the prison¡¯s perspective, difficulty in communication may pose safety risks since they may not be able to understand what is being said. The prison provides support in 19 languages, using a combination of interpreters and machines.
Differences in cultural norms tend to make life in prison harder for foreign inmates. One of them is disciplinary punishments ¡ª such as solitary confinement and sitting in the kneeling seiza position for prolonged periods ¡ª due to minor rules violations.
Teppei Ono, a lawyer and secretary-general of the nonprofit Center for Prisoners¡¯ Rights who often supports prisoners making serious mistreatment claims, including in Tochigi, said he found himself sometimes having to explain to foreign prisoners that their treatment was not considered a breach of human rights in Japan.
In those cases, rather than helping the prisoners mount a legal complaint, he would provide them with cultural context.
¡°For prisoners from European countries or the United States, it¡¯s difficult for them. There is a language barrier, but at the same time, it¡¯s difficult for them to get accustomed to the harsher rules of the prisons,¡± he said.
Rehabilitation over work
A glimpse inside the prison reveals much about the women¡¯s lives there, and the routines they adhere to.
The women work doing sewing, for example, each day between 7:40 a.m. and 4:30 p.m, with a lunch break. They are then allowed to watch TV or do other hobbies in their cells between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., then it¡¯s lights out.
Western-style rooms spanning the size of four tatami mats with hardwood floors, a toilet and soft mattresses on bedframes are designated for foreign nationals and those with health conditions, while larger 10-tatami-floored cells are occupied by six inmates, who sleep on futons. There is a shared toilet outside the room.
The facilities include a library with 5,000 volumes of foreign-language books, an indoor sports hall, on-site medical facilities and a hair salon, where prisoners gain employable skills and service female clients from the surrounding area by offering cuts for ?800 ($4.95).
Work has long been the cornerstone of the in-prison experience, and it has been uniformly applied to most prisoners sentenced, but the delegation of work will become more nuanced for those sentenced in the future.
In 2025, Japan revised its penal code to emphasize rehabilitation and implement some prison sentences without work. Ono at the Center for Prisoners¡¯ Rights described it as ¡°historically significant prison reform,¡± given how rare such changes are.
He added that, at present, the majority of prisoners, including those with physical or mental disabilities, were serving sentences under the previous regime of penal servitude.
Tochigi Prison warden Kiyochika Miyoshi emphasized that there are efforts to place women on a pathway to parole, and that work and ascertaining skills are prioritized as a key tool to combat recidivism once women are released. About 47% of female inmates in Japan in 2024 were in prison for the second time or more.
Mental health support
Another more recent change at the prison, which has three psychologists on staff, is a greater focus on mental health support, with a recently opened ¡°reflection room¡± on prison grounds. The small room, furnished with art, a lounge chair and a plushie, provides a talk space ¡ª an experience akin to therapy offered three times per week, in 30-minute sessions by prison staff.
Miyoshi acknowledged that female prisoners had higher rates of mental health or disability challenges compared to male inmates.
¡°Some have developmental issues and are unable to therefore go through education or find a way to support themselves, and so they commit theft ¡ it¡¯s a very high proportion of such cases,¡± he said.
¡°These are people who may have been neglected by parents while they were young, for example, and so grew up under very challenging circumstances,¡± Miyoshi said.
Many female prisoners, meanwhile, are victims of sexual abuse in the past.
Emiko Suzui, dean of the graduate school at Otemae University who sometimes works as a midwife with incarcerated women, first observed the patterns that set some on a trajectory of crime when she began studying the impacts of childhood sexual abuse and the impact this had on women later in life.
¡°I realized that an overwhelming number of (prisoners) had experienced abuse ¡ I found myself thinking, ¡®So, this is where you ended up,¡¯¡± she said. A 2000 study on 82 female inmates showed that 73% of incarcerated women have suffered sexual violence.
Suzui sees the patterns of women¡¯s lives in prisons as a reflection on society as a whole.
¡°For many of them, living in environments where violence is present has been their norm. They often lack an understanding of concepts such as living calmly, or valuing a peaceful and stable daily life,¡± she said.
Therefore, society should play a greater role in stopping women, wherever they may be, from ending up in prison in the first place, she said.
¡°Based on my many years of research on child abuse and sexual violence against children, I believe that female prisoners are individuals whom society and adults should have protected much earlier, and who should have received proper care and support as child victims,¡± she said.
¡°In this sense, I see female prisoners as a reflection of the unresolved responsibilities of society and adults who failed to protect children.¡±
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