The verdict was handed down by the Supreme Court's Third Petty Bench at 4:00 p.m. on June 3, 2025.

After reading out the main points in overturning the original ruling, Presiding Judge Uga outlined his reasons.

There are two main reasons for this. This corresponds to our petition for acceptance of appeal and also to the content of the oral argument.

1. The documents that are the subject of a disclosure request are those that exist at the time of the request. Even if a lawsuit is filed to revoke a non-disclosure decision, the documents that are the basis for considering the illegality of the non-disclosure decision are those that exist at the time of the request. This does not change even if the content of the document has changed since the time of the request. The original judgment considered whether there were grounds for non-disclosure for documents after the content had changed, which is illegal.

2. Information disclosure is based on the principle of disclosure. If there is information in a document that cannot be disclosed, the administrative agency must assert and prove the reason for non-disclosure. For example, if there is a reason for non-disclosure in part of a specific item, such as "Notes," it is not permitted to withhold disclosure of the entire item. If the part containing the non-disclosure information can be easily separated and removed, the part excluding that part must be disclosed.

The court should have asked the administrative agency to clarify how the reasons for non-disclosure were stated within specific headings.

That's it.

The judgment includes a detailed opinion by Justice Uga, an expert in this field, and a concurring opinion by Justice Hayashi in response (jointed by Justices Watanabe and Hiraki).

The Uga opinion severely criticizes the drawbacks of the so-called information unit theory, while the Hayashi supplementary opinion, while not going so far as to deny the information unit theory itself, shares the practical issues and urges lower courts to conduct concrete and individual considerations, and both opinions share the same concerns.

We hope that this ruling will encourage the practice of information disclosure litigation to return to appropriate application of the law.

The case will now be sent back to the High Court. We will continue to work hard to obtain further disclosure, and we appreciate your continued support.

The appeal was submitted in March of last year, and it was decided recently that a hearing would be held.

The oral argument date is April 18, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.

Please come and listen!

Sorry for the late reply.

On July 24, 2023, we submitted a statement of grounds for appeal and a statement of grounds for requesting acceptance of the appeal .

We received a notice of record arrival from the Supreme Court on October 4th.

The matter is pending before the Third Petty Court.

I hope that the defense team will be able to hold arguments.

Click here for Zoom. Registration is required. We apologize for the short notice.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webina r/register/WN__vHjfSP4SD-RwosCNY6mcQ

Thank you for your continued support.

Regarding this matter, the Tokyo High Court issued an appeal judgment yesterday. It was a partially favorable decision with a wider scope of disclosure than the first-instance decision.

We will hold an online debriefing session on the summary of the judgment as follows.

Please join us.

"National Police Agency Secret Personal Information File Book Information Disclosure Litigation Tokyo High Court Decision Report Meeting"

[Date and time] May 22 , 2023 ( Monday ) 20 : 00-21 : 00
[Holding method] Online ( ZOOM )

On February 6, 2023, at 3:30 p.m., an oral argument was held in Courtroom 809 of the Tokyo High Court.

I have submitted the 4th brief and some procedural documents.

I asked the country to explain in the brief, but the country replied that it was not necessary to respond.

The court asked both sides if there was any further evidence to prove their claims, and they answered that there was none, and the trial was concluded.

 Judgment will be handed down in Courtroom 809 on Wednesday, May 17, at 1:30 p.m.

 As far as the litigation has been conducted so far, it is expected that there will be a substantive judgment in line with the Supreme Court decision dated May 17, 2022. Please come to the hearing.

At 3:00 pm on December 14th, the 3rd Oral Argument Date was held at Courtroom 809 of the Tokyo High Court.

Country: Brief (2), Document of Evidence (2), Otsu 30

Me: Supplementary note

were submitted respectively.

First, it was confirmed that the other party also submitted a letter of consent to the withdrawal of the part that was partially disclosed (withdrawal dated September 20), and that the withdrawal took effect.

After that, there was a scene where the court requested the government to explain as follows.

Court: On page 14 of brief (2), there is a statement that "they are not identical." What does this mean? Does it mean that it is not the same due to additions and changes?

Country: The point is that it is not the same as it may be added and changed if the billing date is different.

Court: What about the name field?
Country: Same purpose

Court: The appellant requested that the grounds for non-disclosure be claimed for each piece of information rather than for each column.

Country: Exactly.

Based on this, the following exchange took place.

Court: What will the appellant do about this?

Me: I object. In addition, I would like to ask two questions regarding the presiding judge's request for clarification. When you say "they are not the same," do you mean that the form and content are not exactly the same as the remarks column of the document disclosed in another case, or do you mean that the form and content may be slightly different? . I'm not sure where the "any" is.

Court: Can you answer now?

Country: The purpose is that there are some differences in format and content, but I would like it in writing because I understand the question correctly.

Court: Appellants should submit clarifications with counterarguments.

Based on the above, the next 4th meeting was designated at 15:30 on February 6th, and it ended.

We plan to submit a document to refute the country's claims. Please continue to pay attention.

At 4:30 pm on September 21st, the second oral argument was held in Courtroom 809 of the Tokyo High Court.

Country: brief

Me: 1st preliminary document, 2nd preliminary document, 3rd preliminary document, Ko 44

were submitted respectively.

The court instructed the government to consider the response to the explanation we requested, in addition to the counterargument to our document.

Our explanation is to pursue that the government's claim is bankrupt regarding the difference between the part disclosed in the separate disclosure request and the part disclosed in this case, so the court also doubts the government's claim. It was suggested that

The government submitted the document by December 6th, and the third date will be held from 3:00 pm on December 14th with issue 809.

 It will be interesting to see what kind of counterarguments the government will make.

TBD

An information disclosure lawsuit that has been disputed at the Tokyo District Court with Clearinghouse as a plaintiff and demands the cancellation of the non-disclosure decision made by the National Police Agency and the obligatory disclosure.

There was a ruling on January 18, 2022, and we won partly. The pay ordered by the court to the government is about 60%.

The information disclosure proceedings for non-disclosure decisions due to obstacles to criminal investigations are difficult to win, but why did we win this time? There have been various circumstances leading up to this point.

Why did we win, what kind of document we were fighting for, what it meant to publish, what was the issue, etc. We would report such kind topics that had happened in this four years since our filing the lawsuit. 

Sorry for the short notice, It's from 8 o'clock today, but please join us. RSVP.