On December 6, 2013, Japan’s Diet (national assembly) passed a controversial Designated Secrets Protection bill, having rushed it through both chambers in barely a month. Both the Liberal Democratic Party [LDP]-led administration that proposed the bill and the LDP-dominated Diet brazenly disregarded many voices of opposition, expressed in the public comments collected by the government (77% against and 13% for the bill), public opinion polls showing twice as many respondents opposing the bill as those in favor, daily demonstrations in front of the Diet building, and statements by an array of professional organizations: lawyers, journalists, academics, writers, film directors and actors, religious leaders as well as human rights and civil rights advocates. The law, promulgated December 13, 2013 and slated to take effect in a year’s time, gives the government potentially unchecked power to designate government information as special secrets, some for an indefinite time, and to punish leakers much more harshly than now. Critics of the law fear that it will further restrict citizens’ already limited access to government information and intimidate public officials, journalists, and citizens, thereby severely eroding the people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to know. Despite the grave and far-reaching implications of the legislation that could seriously jeopardize democracy in Japan, the Abe Shinzo administration rammed the bill through the Diet in less than a month: the administration introduced the bill on November 7, and the Diet spent only 67-68 hours to deliberate it, a strikingly brief time compared with more than 210 hours each that the Diet had spent deliberating the 2005 Postal Service Privatization Act and the 2012 legislation relating to the comprehensive reform of social security and tax systems, commonly known as the tax hike legislation.
Although the bill has been passed, critics believe there is much work to be done: continuing to expose and criticize what is in the law and the process through which it was passed, attempting to prevent it from taking effect and, if that is not possible, monitoring and challenging its implementation so as to curb unbridled government power.
The article below was originally published in Japanese in the October 2013 issue of JCLU [Japan Civil Liberties Union] Newsletter. Although it was written before the passage of the legislation, we publish an English translation here because we believe the issues Professor Sakaguchi raises remain relevant and need to be shared with readers of English.
– See more at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Sakaguchi-Shojiro/4051