Tokyo, July 4, 2020—In the seemingly endless coronavirus pandemic saga, we (at least I) tend to see our environs with gloom, or at best, mumble ‘Que sera sera’ and grin and bear the resent condition. Boredom from self-restraint of not being able to travel, meet people, and speak and sing aloud is seeping deep unto us. And we (I) are growing skeptical about the United States’ ability to lead the world and fear that China would become the largest global influencer in a few years. So the world is not an exciting place now.
Well, that is not really true. As I have been perusing news stories on-line in late June, I stumbled into stories about a U.S. supreme court decision overturning Donald Trump’s ultraconservative policies and upholding abortion rights as constitutional. The decision came days after the highest court ruled against Trump on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and LGTBQ workplace rights. The liberal rulings could not have been possible without the votes of pro-Trump justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and the Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch.
What can be deduced from those cases is that the highest U.S. court practices common sense with disregard for political interference from Trump and Congress, and it delivers decisions reasonably close to lay language releasing them on its website promptly.
The Japanese supreme court can be, almost in stark contrast, easily swayed by politics and other external pressures. And its decisions are released on its website in cryptic judicial language, so illegible that most people don’t care to read. Cases are posted on its website in docket numbers alone. One of its recent decisions, which had drawn much Japanese media coverage, was what is known as the hometown tax system. Shinzo Abe’s government disqualified Isumi-sano City near the western metro area of Osaka from using the tax system for collecting donations from taxpayers because of what the government had determined as excessive return gifts to taxpayers. The supreme court on June 30 ruled the government measure as illegal.
The case doesn’t warrant top court deliberations, and checking recent decisions, most were not of nation-shaking cases. Such cases as Abe’s graft-for-favor Moritomo and Kakei scandals, known as daily-front-paged ‘Morikake’ scandal combined, rarely go to the highest court. The case is now in a high court and the key plaintiff, Yasunori Kagoike, was sentenced to 5 years prison but, strangely, released on bail in February. It could be a few years before the case goes to the supreme court, if it does, when Abe, an alleged accomplice, would be long retired as prime minister. The smell of politics in the judiciary involving courts, prosecutors, and defense attorneys.
It’s been known that the Japanese justice structure is far from independent from the Diet (parliament) and the executive branch, and it clearly shows in the roster of 15 justices (15 compared with 9 for the U.S. counterpart!). Many of them had served as judges in lower courts, prosecutors, lawyers, and academia, as well as strong tie connections to the University of Tokyo law school. Eight of the current justices are the university’s graduates, and only one justice came from the non-judicial occupation, Keiichi Hayashi, a former top foreign ministry official. Not a single person came from the private business sector, and all are Abe administration appointees.
As I write this article, I’ve realized that I know all nine U.S. Supreme court justices and zero of the 15 Japanese top court. This could be a reason why I do not trust the Japanese judiciary – courts, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and the para-legals.
–Toshio Aritake
Insight Into the Future