明治大学2016年（法学部）問題から

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①Lawrence Repeta's fight to document the workings of Japanese　

courtrooms began one day in 1983, when he puIled out a memo 

pad in the Tokyo District Court and jotted down a few notesabout 

an intriguing case.

②“A guard came over and said ‘Put it away,’”said Mt. 

Repeta,a 38‐year‐old lawyer and writer from Seatlle. 

“I looked at him and said: ‘What? This is a public 

courtroom.’”

　 Politely but firmly the guard recited one of the many 

ironclad rules that, in the eyes of many critics here,

have largely served to keep the Japanese judiciary free 

of much scrutiny: Only Japanese jounalists approved by 

the court are permitted to take notes on official 

proceedings.

③Mr.Repeta's encounter with the courtroom guard, and 

then with any number of Japanese judges who insisted 

that note-taking was “disruptive,” ended last week in 

Japan's Supreme Court. In a rare rebuke to the 

country's often hidebound legal system, and a rarer 

embrace of a foreigner's challenge to the status quo, 

the court ruled 14 to 1 that Mr. Repeta should be free 

to scribble at will.

④His victory was immediately hailed by the Japanese 

legal profession, which sided with Mr. Repeta but 

seemed far more comfortable to have an outsider take 

up the cause. In Japan, which cherishes consensus, it 

is often foreigners who question rules that Japanese 

merely abide by.

⑤“People forget that Japan is not a country with a 

democratic tradition,” Mr. Repeta said the other day, 

as the Japanese press marveled that a foreigner had 

taken on one of Japan’s most conservative institutions 

and emerged a winner. “The legal concepts sound 

Western but they almost always take on different 

meaning. In almost every case, order is preferred over 

fundamental individual rights.”

⑥While seemingly trivial, the note-taking issue quickly became a 

symbol among civil liberties groups here of Japan’s ambiguous 

feelings about free speech and detailed scrutiny of how

government works. For as long as anyone can remember, the only

people with note-taking privileges in courtrooms have been 

members of the court “press club,” an exclusive group of 

Japanese reporters assigned to cover the court. A survey by a 

Japanese bar association determined recently that Japan was the 

only major democracy that barred ordinary spectators from 

writing down what they saw in open court.

⑦The rule meant that courtroom guards would regularly scan the crowds for

 authors, novelists, law students and foreign correspondents scribbling notes,

 often removing their pencils and sometimes the offenders themselves. Judges 

may grant special permission for note-taking, but as a rule they have routinely

 denied such requests.(Japanese judges have something of a reputation for 

quirky rules on decorum. Last fall, a judge created a flurry of protest when he

 ordered a physically handicapped spectator removed from the courtroom, 

saying wheel chairs were disruptive. Another barred a woman in a white summer

 hat.) Mr.Repeta’s battle with the judiciary started soon after he left a job with a

 Japanese law firm in 1982 to research a book about a Japanese stockbroker on

 trial for income tax evasion. The testimony in the case revealed a lot about how

 stock prices can be manipulated on the Japanese stock markets, and it

 embarrassed celebrities, businessmen and politicians among the broker's clients.

⑧Seven times Mr. Repeta asked for permission to take notes. Each time 

the application was denied without explanation. When Mr. Repeta hired 

Japanese lawyers to help him, the judge refused to meet with them to 

explain his ruling. 

　So, with the help of the Japan Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Repeta sued 

the Government, an event unusual enough by itself in Japan. Each time 

he lost.

⑨The first court that heard the case ruled that the guarantee of 

open trials, a provision of the Constitution imposed on Japan 

during the American occupation, protects only use of “the five 

senses” in the courtroom. Note-taking, the court ruled, was a 

supplemental act and not protected. In its ruling, the court 

explained that witnesses might be psychologically affected by the 

presence of non-approved journalists taking notes. In fact, the 

court said gravely, note-taking could lead to inaccurate reporting 

about what takes place in the Japanese courtroom.

⑩The Tokyo High Court, an appeals court, ruled that while the 

Constitution might allow note-taking, the judge had a right to stop 

any activity that had “even a slight possibility of affecting” 

courtroom proceedings.

  But by that time, the case was becoming an embarrassment. 

Ryuzo Saki, one of Japan’s best-known authors, filed a similar 

lawsuit. A “support group” formed around Mr. Repeta and 

Mr. Saki. “The media got behind us, a lot of people got behind us, 

and soon we had a consensus of opinion leaders on this issue,” 

Mr. Repeta said. “That way the Supreme Court had no choice.”

　

⑪Still, Mr. Repeta's victory was far from total. The Supreme Court 

dismissed his claim to $10,000 in damages. And it stopped short of 

saying that court spectators had a right to take notes. The court 

did rule, however, that “the freedom to take notes should be 

respected,” and that ordinarily note-taking could not be construed 

as obstructing “the fair and smooth conduct of a trial.”

⑫The word passed quickly. Employees at the Tokyo 

District Court taped over signs warning spectators to 

keep their pens in their pockets. Mr.Saki, the author, 

said he wanted to head to a court “just to take out 

my memo pad there.”

  Soon Mr.Saki may have something to write about. By coincidence the

Supreme Court's ruling comes just as a major political drama is about

to move to the courtroom.

⑬For several weeks, prosecutors have been arresting 

principals in the scandal, in which a fast-growing 

company named Recruit sprinkled the Japanese 

establishment with millions of dollars worth of unlisted 

stock, apparently to gain favor with the Government and 

big business. Last week alone, the former chairman of 

the world's biggest corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, and

the highest-ranking bureaucrat in the Labor Ministry were arrested 

on bribery charges.

⑭When they appear in court to describe the seamy 

underside of Japanese politics, a flood of writers, 

pencils in hand, are expected to greet them. But some 

social critics, like Maruo Shioda, a well-known local 

commentator, say the Japanese should not be too

 proud of their new found liberty. “We have to reflect 

upon ourselves,” he said the other day, “that it took a

foreigner's appeal to reach this reasonable conclusion."