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After a 20-year effort, the Law Concerning Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs (1) was approved by the Diet in May 1999 and went into effect in April 2001. The law allows any individual or company, Japanese or foreign, to request administrative documents held by administrative agencies in electronic or printed form. A separate law enacted in November 2001 extended the coverage of the access law to public service corporations. Departments must respond in 30 days.

There are six broad categories of exemptions. Documents can be withheld if they contain information about a specific individual unless the information is made public by law or custom, is necessary to protect a life, or relates to a public official in his public duties; corporate information that risks harming its interests and was given voluntarily in confidence; information that puts national security or international relations or negotiations at risk; information that would hinder law enforcement; internal deliberations that would harm the free and frank exchange of opinions or hinder internal decision making; business of a public organ relating to inspections; and supervision, contracts, research, personnel management, or business enterprise.

Exempted information can be disclosed by the head of the agency "when it is deemed that there is a particular public-interest need." The head of the agency can also refuse to admit the existence of the information if answering the request will reveal the information.

There is no internal appeal. Appeals are referred by the agency to the Information Disclosure Review Board, a committee in the Office of the Prime Minster made of panels of three persons from outside government including law professors and retired public officials.

The Board has made a number of interesting decisions. In September 2002, it recommended the disclosure of the minutes of the meetings between Emperor Hirohito and US General Douglas MacArthur. In 2004, it recommended that the Health Ministry release a list of 500 hospitals that used a blood-clotting agent infected with Hepatitis C. Following the decision, the Health Minister promised to release the full list of 7,000 hospitals that used the drug. The decisions are not binding but are generally followed. The Coast Guard in August 2004 was the first government body to refuse a recommendation.(2)

Denials can also be appealed to one of eight different district courts. There were 23 lawsuits filed in 2004. The district courts ruled in 20 cases and the appeals courts in 11 cases. The Supreme Court also heard a number of cases based on local FOI laws. In June 2004, the Tokyo District Court ordered the Supreme Court to release four documents related to a bribery case involving Lockheed Martin.

There was a total of 93,717 requests in 2004 to administrative agencies and public corporations, up from 73,348 in 2003 and 48,000 in 2002. In all of the years, a significant percentage of the requests have been from companies and individuals demanding copies of public lists such as high-income taxpayers and alcoholic beverage license holders. In 2004, nearly 60,000 of the requests resulted in full disclosure, 21,000 in partial releases and over 3,000 in non-disclosure. There were over 1,500 administrative appeals and 720 decisions from the Review Board in 2004.

The main criticisms by civil society groups of the Act as implemented are high fees, delays in referring appeals to the Information Disclosure Review Board, missing documents, poor archiving, and excessively broad disclosures.(3) The public interest test is only infrequently used.(4) Since the adoption of the new law on protecting personal privacy, government bodies have expanded the scope of withholding personal information about public officials. It is cited in approximately 70 percent of withholdings.(5)

A government panel made up of law professors and experts conducted an extensive review of the law in 2005 that mostly focused on its implementation. The panel released its report in March 2005 finding numerous problems with the law but made no recommendations on changes to the legislation, after deciding that its mandate did not allow it to do so.(6) The government issued a decree in April 2006 that reduced fees by half.

The Act on the Protection of Personal Information was adopted in 2003.(7) It allows individuals to obtain and correct their personal information by public and private bodies.

A 1999 law required the creation of a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register.(8) A law which requires government ministries, local governments and specified businesses to publish annual reports on the environmental consequences of their activities was approved in 2004.(9)

Nearly 3,000 local governments also have adopted disclosure laws. Over 80 percent of all villages also have disclosure laws. The first jurisdictions to adopt laws were Kanayama town in Yamagata prefecture and Kanagawa Prefecture in 1982.(10)

2004 freedominfo.org Global Survey Results - Japan

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Documents Released Under Public Information Disclosure Law Show Government Designated Tombs of Ancient Emperors Based on Questionable Evidence
Noboru Toike, a professor and expert on Imperial tombs, used Japan's public information disclosure law to obtain academic studies conducted by the Imperial Household Agency regarding the discovery of at least 10 ancient tombs that the government has claimed hold the remains of emperors from the 5th through 13th centuries. The documents support the belief by many historians and archaeologists, including Toike, that the government designated dozens of tombs as those of some of the 124 past emperors without adequate scientific proof or academic research; instead, the designation of the ancient tombs were made in the late 19th century, largely based on references in ancient documents and folklore. Japanese historians have been prohibited from conducting their own excavations and scientific probes into the supposed imperial tombs to gain additional knowledge about Japanese history.
[SOURCE: Yoshida Reij, "New Weapon Wielded in Old Tomb Debate," Japan Times, June 23, 2005.]

Information Requests Reveal Destruction of Records by Administrative Agencies in Japan
Information Clearinghouse Japan, a non-profit organization, conducted an investigation based on information requests filed under the Japanese public information disclosure law regarding the destruction of official records before that law came into effect in March 2001. The records showed that at least ten agencies significantly increased their disposal of documents during fiscal year 2000, some by as much as 20 percent. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) increased its disposal volume during that period by more than twenty times: in fiscal 1999, MAFF destroyed only 11 tons of documents, compared to 233 tons in fiscal 2000. Government officials claimed that the widespread disposal occurred in expectation of the consolidation of some government ministries and the changes in records management rules.
[SOURCE: K. Tsuruoka, "Leap in records scrapped prior to FOI," Yomiuri Shinbun, Dec. 9, 2004.]

16 JANUARY 2004
JAPAN: Assembly Chief Leaks Requester's Data
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan) reports on a Nagano man, who applied for the release of travel data on three assembly members who had gone on business trips using public funds, and found that government officials leaked his personal data to the very people he was requesting information on.

The leaked data included the man's name, address and other private details, the sources said. The Nagano resident had requested the data under a prefectural information disclosure ordinance.

After the request was filed, the administrative office told Minoru Kobayashi, the assembly president, about it. Kobayashi decided the three assembly members should know the man was snooping into their travel records. He instructed the office to call the three and tell them the man's personal data, which was also later faxed to the assembly members.

``We told the assembly members after the president decided that they should know,'' an office staffer said. ``We have done the same thing on other occasions.''

Tsutomu Shimizu, a lawyer at the Japan Federation of Bar Associations who specializes in private information protection, called the matter a "grave situation.''

"It shatters the foundations of the disclosure system. Collusion between assembly members and the secretariat to leak private data makes it impossible for residents to feel comfortable asking for information,'' he said.

12 NOVEMBER 2003
JAPAN: Supreme Court Overturns Disclosure Ruling
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan) reports that the Supreme Court has overturned a high court decision ordering the disclosure of the names and titles of private citizens wined and dined by the Osaka municipal government in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The case involves a June 1992 request by the citizens group Mihariban for records of the city's food-related expenditures between July 1988 and March 1992-including meals provided to attendees of meetings and conferences held by the city government.

The Supreme Court ruled that the names of private citizens in nongovernmental positions should not be disclosed.

However, the top court did send the case back to the Osaka High Court on one point, arguing that civil servants and organization representatives do not enjoy similar protection.

The group was looking for information in connection with a scandal involving city employees who falsified expense records by reporting fictitious reasons for expenditures and inventing dining partners to expropriate public money.

9 MAY 2003
JAPAN: Public Highway Corporation Spends Over 1 million Yen to Treat Politicians
The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the Japan Public Highway Corporation spent a total of 1.47 million yen to wine and dine 11 lawmakers on 17 different occasions between fiscal 2001 and 2002.

Documents, obtained under the Japanese Information Disclosure law, show that the public corporation spent about 77 million yen on entertainment, including the meetings with the 11 politicians, over the two years. It spent 51.98 million yen in fiscal 2001 and 25.36 million yen in fiscal 2002.

The Political Funds Control Law prohibits the public corporation and other
government-related organizations to donate money for political activities. The
lavish meetings, held at expensive Japanese-style restaurants and hotels, might be in violation of this law.

In 11 of the 17 meetings, the public corporation spent more than 10,000 yen for each participant. Alcoholic beverages were reportedly often served during the meetings.

22 APRIL 2003
JAPAN: Open Archives Scare Ministries
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan) reports that government officials in Japan, hesitant to release files to public scrutiny, have been hoarding documents by extending their supposed ``preservation periods,'' since an information disclosure law made archive records more open to the public

Experts view this as a less than auspicious response by bureaucrats to the vaunted disclosure law that came into effect in April 2001. Before the enactment of the law, it was common practice for archival officials to respect the wishes of ministries and agencies when deciding which files to reveal, but since the disclosure law came into force, national archivists have been bound by tighter guidelines.

The state-run National Archives of Japan stores documents deemed ``historically valuable.''

29 MAY 2002
JAPAN: Official Compiles Data on Information-Seekers
The Japan Times reports that a Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) officer compiled personal data on individuals requesting disclosure of Defense Agency information and passed it along to other agency officials.

According to the Defense Agency, the MSDF officer compiled personal data on 142 individuals who requested agency-related information between April 2001, when the information disclosure law went into effect

The information included such items as occupations and organizations people belong to, as well as notes on some individuals, such as "antiwar SDF official" and "mother of unsuccessful SDF applicant."

Notes

1. Law Concerning Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs. http://www.soumu.go.jp/gyoukan/kanri/translation3.htm. For a detailed analysis and comparison with US law, see Lawrence Repeta and David M. Schultz, Japanese Government Information: New Rules for Access - The 2001 Information Disclosure Law, and a Comparison with the U.S. FOIA, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia/japanfoia.html

2. Coast guard refuses official request for info, The Asahi Shimbun, 14 August 2004.

3. Lawrence Repeta, "Japan's Disappointing Information Disclosure Law" (forthcoming).

4. Info disclosure law has achieved little, The Daily Yomiuri, 3 April 2006.

5. Repeta, id.

6. Repeta, id.

7. http://www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/kojin/foreign/act.pdf

8. Law Concerning Reporting, etc. of Releases to the Environment of Specific Chemical Substances and Promoting Improvements in Their Management. Law No. 86 of 1999. http://www.env.go.jp/en/laws/chemi/prtr/index.html. See Ministry of Environment, Pollution Release and Transfer Register. http://www.prtr-info.jp/prtrinfo/e-index.html

9. Law Concerning the Promotion of Business Activities with Environmental Consideration by Specified Corporations, etc., by Facilitating Access to Environmental Information, and Other Measures, Law No. 77 of 2004. http://www.env.go.jp/en/laws/policy/business.pdf

10. Lawrence Repeta, The Birth of the Freedom of Information Act in Japan: Kanagawa 1982. http://www.freedominfo.org/reports/japan.htm

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