Professor HONDA Katsuya, Faculty of Medicine

Do you know the differences between legal medicine and anatomy, or between a judicial autopsy and a standard autopsy? Legal medicine is the branch of medicine that meets the call for a scientific, impartial medical opinion in a legal case. Autopsies carried out for such purpose are judicial autopsies. Whereas legal medicine is implemented within the social context, anatomy is basic research on the human body and is part of medical education. A standard autopsy is an external examination of the body conducted when the death was not confirmed by a doctor or the cause of death could not be determined. It is carried out when there is a societal need. In Japan, while some local governments (the 23 wards of Tokyo and five other cities) have a medical examiner (coroner) to conduct autopsies, in other areas it is common for a general practitioner commissioned by the police to be in charge of autopsies in the presence of a judicial police official. A judicial (court-ordered) autopsy, conducted when there is suspicion of a crime, is usually requested of the department of legal medicine in a university medical school. Most of the judicial autopsies in Ibaraki Prefecture are conducted single-handedly by Prof. Honda. In particular, when a judicial autopsy involves murder, Prof. Honda is always the specialist in charge.

With a longstanding interest in human beings, Prof. Honda entered the university to study psychology. He was one of the first students to major in psychology in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. After graduating, however, his interest led him to the study of the human being in a physical sense, and he re-enrolled in the School of Medicine and Medical Sciences. Although he had gained experience in medical examination and treatment as an intern, he was more interested in medical science than medical treatment, looking to explore the physiology of the human being, therefore deciding on becoming a forensic scientist to explore the human body to its greatest depth. "A corpse cannot speak, but it never lies. Our bodies leave signs that lead to the truth," says Prof. Honda. Legal medicine involves examining the bodies of people who have died from an external cause, such as an external wound or trauma, in which criminality is suspected. In most cases the body was a healthy individual until immediately prior to the incident, and thus it is the person as a whole that the examiner looks at. While in the study of anatomy a body is treated as a specimen to gain knowledge about human structure, the study of pathology, in contrast, looks at the organs or tissues to study the mechanism of the particular disease that caused the death. Comparatively speaking, regardless of the body's age or cause of death, legal medicine involves the study of the human body in its closest state to living.

Article by Science Communicator at the Office of Public Relations