by DAVID MCNEILL
A common perception about Japan’s justice system is the higher up the court the more conservative the ruling. The most recent decision by the Tokyo High Court in a suit demanding the release of documents proving Japan’s secret accord with the US over the 1972 Okinawa reversion did nothing to challenge that cliché. But it did expose the radical legal summersaults required to keep the full truth from seeping out.
In reversing an earlier ruling by the Tokyo District Court that ordered the state to release diplomatic documents on the accord, Presiding Judge Aoyagi Kaoru agreed that the secret pact existed but said it is “highly likely” that papers proving it have been thrown away. Aoyagi accepted that although the government had previously lied, it had since conducted an “intensive search” for the documents and no longer had any reason to conceal them.
That ruling pleased the government’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, who told The Yomiuri newspaper that the decision “accepted our standing position that we don’t have the documents we are being asked to disclose.” Fujimura added that he takes “very seriously” the allegation that the government dumped the papers, so seriously indeed that it would not reexamine the case.
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