JAPAN TIMES COMMUNITY PAGE COLUMN
THE ZEIT GIST
Lawsuit-free land a myth
Who says people don't sue in Japan? They do, and sometimes do good.
By Arudou Debito
Column 27 for the Japan Times Community Page
January 3, 2006
DRAFT TEN--WITH NEW INTRO
Courtesy http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20060103zg.htm
(This version is the original copy submitted to editors.)
Japan is not renowned for its courtroom dramas. But occasionally a landmark ruling makes the front pages.
Witness the September 14, 2005 Supreme Court decision regarding absentee voting systems. Plaintiffs sued the government for not guaranteeing their Constitutional right to vote from overseas, and won.
This is big. Big enough maybe, believe it or not, to have a profound effect on human rights for foreigners in Japan.
More on that in a minute. First some background:
Non-Japanese residents already have a history of taking things to court for racial discrimination.
To wit: The Ana Bortz Case of 1999, where a woman was thrown out of a Hamamatsu jewelry store for being Brazilian. The Otaru Onsens Case of 2001-2005,
where three caucasians (one a naturalized Japanese) were barred from a
bathhouse for having the wrong physical appearance. A case in
2003, where a Saitama realtor screened a Subcontinental Indian renter
for the appropriateness of his skin color. And a 2004 case, where
a naturalized Chinese was refused entry at a Tokyo bar ostensibly for
being foreign.
Early next year, the Osaka District Court will opine on the Steve McGowan Case (Community Page Nov 30, 2004), where an African-American was refused entry to a Kyoto eyeglass shop because the manager "doesn't like black people".
No doubt the future portends more lawsuits of this ilk, as "Japanese Only" signs and policies continue to proliferate nationwide. Racial discrimination, lest you forget, is not illegal in Japan.
However, the good news is that plaintiffs above have won their cases,
penalizing private-sector businesses for their exclusionism.
That's encouraging. And not only because non-Japanese are slowly
realizing that with copious time, money, and willpower, they might sue
and get some semblance of justice.
They might even positively affect legal precedent in Japan.
Now, before detractors
resume accusing these "foreign lawsuiters" of "cultural imperialism",
of "foisting their Western litigiousness on Japan", consider some facts:
First, it's perfectly all right to sue in Japan. As
the Japanese government told the UN in 1999, access to the courts is a
constitutionally-guaranteed right. (They also mentioned that
Japan needs no laws against racial discrimination precisely because the
Japanese judiciary will provide redress.)
Second, about that myth that "Japanese don't sue". Time it got a dirt nap.
According to the latest figures available on the Prime Minister's
Cabinet homepage, in 1998 alone there were a total of nearly 5.5
million suits in Japan (civil, criminal, summary, and family) filed in
all levels of court (District, High, and Supreme). http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/sihouseido/dai8/saikousai/12s.pdf
Filed by--you guessed it--Japanese people.
In fact, the Japanese judicial system is so clogged with cases that
there is debate on how to speed things up--by, say, lessening court
deliberation time, or making it easier for people to pass the Bar.
It's not as if you haven't heard of any high-profile lawsuits in Japan. Win or lose, here are a few:
Hansen's Disease patients, Minamata mercury poisoning victims, Ienaga Saburo's textbook censorship, salary discrimination by gender, and various wartime issues left unresolved by any other means...
Again, these lawsuits were filed not by "litigious Westerners", but by
Japanese and other Asians. People with strong senses of social
justice, found in any society. They wanted to be compensated for
mental suffering, make public statements of discontent, even set a good
judicial precedent.
Some, encouraged by Japanese legal support networks, even do what could
be disparagingly labeled as "nuisance" lawsuits: Suing local and
national governments for "negligence" (fusakui). Still, they are perfectly entitled to, under the "State Reparations Law" (kokka baishou hou). That's why it exists.
After all, filing suit against individual miscreants is like pounding
moles in a mountain range. Suing the government for not serving
their taxpayers may offer universal redress in one stroke.
But that's quite a challenge. You know the axiom, "you can't fight City Hall". It's even more true in Japan.
Traditionally, lawsuits against the government have been an exercise in
creative illogic. Japanese courts have ruled that the Public has
no legal ground to expect laws to be passed to safeguard their
constitutional rights.
Why? The argument runs: the judiciary cannot force the
legislative branch to legislate. That would be a violation of the
separation of powers.
But further lawsuits have fortunately eroded that. Let me take you down a line of precedents:
Once upon a time, there was a handicapped person in Sapporo.
Unable to leave his house, he could not vote in elections because Japan
had no absentee ballot system.
In 1971, he sued the national government for not taking sufficient
measures to ensure his constitutionally-guaranteed right of suffrage.
In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that he had no case. Passing
laws is, after all, "at the government's discretion". It also
ruled, incredibly, that public policy is a political matter, and that
politicians have no absolute duty to protect the rights of individual
citizens. (Ashibe Nobuyoshi, "Kenpou", pg 347)
That's nuts. What's the point of having a Constitution,
then? One would expect elected representatives to be first in
line to follow it.
This affected future lawsuits. In the abovementioned Onsens Case,
the Otaru city government was sued for negligence, i.e. not taking
effective measures to force businesses to cease unconstitutional
"Japanese Only" policies.
Citing the 1985 precedent, courts ruled that a local government had no
absolute duty to protect its foreign residents (or its Japanese
citizens, for that matter) from racial discrimination. Sapporo High Court made the most sophistic, er, sophisticated argument:
"If there is a law out there, we can rule whether or not it is constitutional or against international treaty.
"However, if there is NO law, there is nothing we can rule upon.
"Therefore, the non-existence of a law is not actionable in court."
That's even more nuts. This gives governments an incentive to
avoid passing a law, because doing so will take away their
"discretionary power", moreover make them liable in court. So do
nothing--this ruling demonstrated there's no penalty for that.
Should be cause for defenestration. But take heart. If
enough people file suit, eventually something good gets through.
That's what happened. Let's go back to that September 14, 2005 decision, where plaintiffs sued over the lack of absentee voting for overseas Japanese.
When the Supreme Court agreed, it created the legal precedent to say
the government CAN be held responsible for not passing laws.
Suddenly, this opens an avenue for Japan's foreign community.
The lack of a racial discrimination law is now technically legally actionable.
Slow. My legal consultants caution against over-optimism.
The right to vote is rightly seen as the cornerstone of Japan's postwar
democracy. Judges will see this right as more deserving of
special protection than most.
But courts didn't see that as so important twenty years ago. Or even last year.
So who knows what will happen if somebody takes the national government
to court for not passing a law against racial discrimination?
Despite fifty years of Postwar Constitution and a decade of treaty
promises to do so?
Someone oughta. Because even lawsuits that get derided as
"frivolous" and "nuisances" act as incessant drops upon the
stone. Years later, an impression gets made.
Few things cause change faster than exposing for public critique the hitherto unspoken illogics that perpetuate flawed systems.
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Sapporo Lawyer Toshiteru Shibaike contributed to this essay.
1220 words
ENDS
Copyright 2006 Arudou Debito, Sapporo, Japan