(Provisional Translation)

Government Statement

May 25, 2001

With regard to the ruling handed down by the Kumamoto District Court on 11 May 2001, ordering the Government to pay compensation to patients of Hansen's disease, the Government of Japan has made the extremely exceptional decision not to appeal the ruling. However, on this occasion, the Government, as one of the parties concerned, makes its stance clear that there are several legal issues arising from this ruling listed below, concerning the fundamental interpretation of the Law Concerning State Liability for Compensation and the Civil Code.

1.
In legislative activities, members of the Diet take political responsibility for the people of Japan as a whole. However, they take legal responsibility for matters regarding the rights of individual persons, "only in exceptional cases such that the content of legislation has been knowingly compiled by the Diet, despite the fact that it is in direct contravention of the Constitution of Japan, the text of which can only be interpreted in a single meaning," (Supreme Court Ruling of the No. 1 Small Courtroom, 21 November 1985), that is to say, it is limited to cases where the Constitution of Japan has been willfully violated, resulting in the infringement of the rights of the people of Japan. From this viewpoint, this ruling broadly accepts legal responsibility for acts of omission without premeditation by Diet members. This would mean that the judiciary would exceed the right of constitutional review of legislative bills, and limit the activities of Diet members, and is therefore in violation of the aforementioned legal precedent and could not in any circumstances be accepted as an interpretation of the Law Concerning State Liability for Compensation.

2.
The latter half of Article 724 of the Civil Code stipulates that the right to demand compensation for damages expires after twenty years. However, the ruling in the Hansen's disease case, as a result, has accepted the granting of compensation for damages over a range of 40 years. In this case, this was due to the fact that the suffering of patients and former patients had to be taken into account. However, accepting such a conclusion may represent a violation of the stipulations of the Civil Code, accordingly having a considerable influence on the rights and obligations of the people, and legally this should not be ignored.