Bobby Fischer makes a tactical change
Japan’s legal system attracts the country’s brightest students, who have promptly turned the profession into a dull, archaic world filled with gloom for those who have to deal with it.
Simply becoming a leading player in the Japanese legal world is a monumental task. Each year, around 50,000 people sit for the bar exam, roughly the same number as in most U.S. states. Only about 2.5 % of those who sit the bar exam will pass. (This would change in 2007, when relaxed rules made the legal profession more accessible, but that’s a different story and not the conditions Masako Suzuki would face when she became a lawyer.)
For the 1,000 or so who do get past the first barrier, there waits a lengthy training period orchestrated by the Supreme Court of Japan.
Upon completion, successful bar exam candidates must select whether they will go on to become a public prosecutor aiming to convict suspects, a lawyer who will defend them, or one of the panel of three judges who rule on cases in lower court trials in a country which does not have a jury system.
Inaccessible to all but the cleverest and hardest working students in the country, Japan’s legal world has, as of February 2005, just 21,178 lawyers – less than most U.S. states.
With Japan’s population of roughly 131 million, there is only one lawyer for every 6,185 people. The dearth of lawyers has created a creaking legal system that often means it can take years before verdicts can be handed down.
Though changing, like much of Japan, the legal world retains many neo-Confucian values and it remains largely a male-dominated world, waiting for the effects to kick in from the Equal Employment Opportunity Law introduced in 1985 but only really made effective by revisions enacted in 2000.
Suzuki clawed her way through the entangling process to enter the legal world.
Suzuki would become a product of her times, quickly becoming a specialist in immigration affairs as the population of illegal aliens in Japan burgeoned with the growing number of foreigners who poured into the country from the early 1990s to grab their slice of the riches that still remained even as the country’s economy went into its Lost Decade.
Suzuki and the Izumi Legal Office where she worked had earned a name among the foreign community for defending “overstayers,” the Japanese-English term used to describe people who had entered the country on mostly tourist visas then proceeded to ignore the conditions of their stay to largely take on the “dirty, dangerous and demanding” jobs most affluent Japanese were shunning but desperately needed to be performed.
It was Suzuki’s expertise in Japan’s immigration laws that drew Bobby Fischer’s supporters to her.
As the grandmaster pined away in the Narita Airport Immigration Bureau detention cell dungeons four floors underground, his defense team acted quickly.
Suzuki went to see Fischer in his detention center and slammed authorities for keeping the grandmaster in a cavern-like hole, saying it was having an ill effect on his health.
“I think he looks very tired, very fatigued. I think his condition is not good mentally, physically,” Suzuki said after a visit to see Fischer in his detention center.
John Bosnitch, who had now formed the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer, also lashed out at Immigration Bureau officials, paying particular attention to the chess champion’s complaints about the excessive smoking around his cell.
“He has had no fresh air, no exercise, no sunlight and is smoked out all day,” Bosnitch told the media.
One of the first steps Suzuki took on Fischer’s behalf was to buy him more time.
Upon learning of the rejection of the grandmaster’s first request for “provisional release,” the Japanese equivalent to bail, Suzuki immediately made another application for the grandmaster to be freed until his case was heard.
She then applied for an extension in a hearing on the chess champion’s appeal against deportation, getting him a few more days.
Suzuki advised Fischer that he apply for asylum. He agreed and Suzuki filed to have the grandmaster recognized as a political refugee, the only type that Japan is prepared to accept.
“In almost all cases the Japanese government will not force such a person back to their home country while the case is pending,” she said at the time.
Given a slight buffer by Suzuki, others started investigating different avenues that could offer Fischer a way to get out of custody in Japan without being collared by law enforcers from the United States.
Fischer’s father was a German citizen, so Bosnitch spearheaded the efforts to scour the globe and collect documents that would allow the chess champion to claim citizenship of that country.
Appeals for help also went out to Fischer supporters in other countries where the chess champion had left his mark. Among the possible refuges were Iceland, site of his 1972 World Championship triumph; Argentina, where he launched his FischerRandom game he saw as an alternative to traditional chess, the Philippines, where he may or may not have family, and Serbia-Montenegro, the rump state of the former Yugoslavia, long a favorite of Fischer who wanted to play his first match against Spassky there and site of the re-match that had now got U.S. crimebusters on his case.
Serbia-Montenegro reportedly expressed a willingness to extend a lifeline, which the Fischer defense team appeared willing to accept.
“He likes Serbia-Montenegro, he has spent considerable time there,” Bosnitch said. “It’s a chess-playing nation and he is revered there. He’d be a welcome guest and a happy visitor.”
But the official offer never went out. Cowed by NATO’s 1999 bombing war in Kosovo, Serbia-Montenegro officials quickly shied away from Fischer.
But Fischer was spending time in his cell helping with the preparation of his defense and was preparing to drop a bombshell of his own.
