最高裁 (Supreme Court of Japan)

The defendant was accused of taking and imprisoning four young women in either the guestroom of a hotel or in the defendant’s home. The victims suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) as a result of the imprisonment. One of the key issues in the case was whether the defendant’s act constituted the crime of Confinement Causing Injury, or only the crime of Confinement. The defendant argued that a psychiatric condition, such as PTSD, should not be regarded as an “injury” under the Criminal Code.

In this appeal, a child born to unmarried parents appealed the High Court’s finding that a relevant part of the proviso to Article 900.4 of the Japanese Civil Code was not inconsistent with Article 14.1 of the Constitution of Japan, prohibiting discrimination based on race, belief, sex, social status, or lineage.  The proviso set forth that the statutory share in inheritance of a child born out of wedlock is half of that of a child in wedlock.

The plaintiff was a physiotherapist in a managerial position at her employer. She requested and was granted maternity leave but was not allowed to return to her position at the end of the maternity leave. She filed a lawsuit against her employer, asserting that there was a violation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law. The Supreme Court found in favor of the plaintiff because the Equal Employment Opportunity Law forbids disadvantaging employees based on the employee’s pregnancy, childbirth, request for maternity leave, or request for transfer to lighter work.

The plaintiff, who had divorced her former husband and remarried seven months later, sued the State claiming that she had suffered mental distress due to a provision in the Civil Code which barred women from remarrying until six months after the dissolution or rescission of her previous marriage. Both the District Court and the High Court dismissed the plaintiff’s argument, saying that the restriction was not necessarily unreasonable because it was meant to avert confusion over the paternity of any children born immediately after a divorce.

A mother, on behalf of her infant child, filed a lawsuit for a declaratory judgment for absence of parent-child relationship with the appellant––a man to whom the mother was married when the child was born.  The request for the judgment was based on the fact that a DNA test result showed that, with 99.99 percent probability, the infant was a child of a different man, with whom the mother was having an affair.  By the time of the trial, the wife and the child had left the appellant to live with the child’s biological father.  Article 772 of the Japanese Civil Code, in general,

The plaintiff-husband, who transitioned from female to male, and the plaintiff-wife requested the local public agency to amend their family registry to state the plaintiff-husband as the father of their child. The child was born by artificial insemination and had no blood relationship with the plaintiff-husband. The Supreme Court determined that, since the child was conceived by the plaintiff-wife during marriage, he is presumed to be a child of the plaintiff-husband under the Civil Code, and ordered the family registry to be amended.

The defendant committed acts of obscenity upon a young girl.  He alleged that it was only for a monetary purpose—to record the act and give the recording to his acquaintance in return for receiving a loan —and that he had no sexual intent.  The defendant appealed the High Court’s ruling that sexual intent is not required to establish a prima facie case of indecent assault, which is proscribed by Article 176 of the Japanese Penal Code.  He argued that the High Court’s findi

The appellee, a former employee of the appellant’s subsidiary, suffered sexual harassment and stalking from an employee of the appellant’s other subsidiary who shared the same work site with the appellee. The appellant had developed a corporate-group-wide compliance system, which included a consulting desk at which an employee of the appellant or its subsidiaries could raise and discuss any compliance-related matters.  The appellee brought the harassment issue to her supervisors at her immediate employer (i.e.

The appellant in this case had been arrested and punished with a fine for allegedly paying for child prostitution in violation of the Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and the Protection of Children (before its revision by Act No. 79 of 2014).

This case concerns the custody of a Japanese couple’s son who was born and raised in the United States until the mother, without the father’s consent, took him to Japan when he was 11 years old.  Pursuant to the Japanese implementation of The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the father, who was still based in the U.S., petitioned for the return of the son to the U.S.  A family court in Tokyo granted the petition.  However, the attempt to enforce the order of the court failed as the mother strongly resisted when a court execution officer