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In Japan, policework not exactly like CSI
...But Saito's death has given credence to complaints by a group of frustrated doctors, former pathologists and ex-cops who argue that Japan's police culture is the main obstacle. Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher murder rate in their jurisdiction and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, they allege.

Odds are, they say, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the world's lowest per capita murder rates.

"You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined," says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division.

He says senior police officers are "obsessed with statistics because that's how you get promotions" and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate.

Japan's annual police report says its officers made arrests in 96.6 percent of the country's 1,392 murders in 2005.

But Saikawa, who says he became disillusioned by "fishy" police practices, left the force in 1997 after 30 years. He claims that police try to avoid adding murders to their caseload unless the identity of the killer is obvious....