Almaden Institute

Privacy and Personal Information Protection in Japan:  Past, Present and Future Abstract: In Japan, the Personal Information Protection Bill and four other Bills for the protection of personal information held by administrative agencies were approved by Cabinet for submission to the Diet on March 27, 2001 and March 15, 2002 respectively and were abolished on December 13, 2002. The revised Bills were decided by Cabinet and introduced to the Diet on March 7, 2003. I believe the history of personal data protection in Japan can be divided into the following four stages: Recognition of the right to privacy and calls for its systematic protection from the 1950s to the mid—1970s; Calls for and realization of regimes for personal data protection at local government level from the mid—1970s; The consideration of laws for personal data protection by administrative agencies, establishment of personal data protection guidelines, and introduction of regimes for personal data protection at prefectural level from the mid—1980s to the present day; and Proposals for and debates of a basic law for personal data protection at national level from 1999 onwards. In this paper, I concentrate on the fourth stage, explaining in detail the background to the current draft of the Personal Information Protection Bill and its contents from the perspective of an active participant in the movement towards enhanced protection of personal data in this country. This explanation includes discussion of the committee work of the Advanced Information and Telecommunications Society Promotion Headquarters, Working Party on Personal Data Protection, and Task Force for Legislation of Personal Data Protection among others. While the treatment of freedom of expression under the current draft of the Personal Information Protection Bill remains controversial, Japan is now the only nation in the industrialized world that has not enacted personal data protection laws covering the private sector, and it is to be hoped that this deficiency will be remedied as soon as possible. However, it is highly significant that, in a country where awareness of personal data protection issues is relatively low, the entire government has, for the first time in Japanese history, chosen to address the problem of personal data protection.   Dr. Masao Horibe - Bio  Dr. Masao Horibe  Professor of Law, Chuo University  mhoribe@tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp Biography Dr. Masao Horibe is Professor of Law at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan and Professor Emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. He taught comparative law, information law, etc., for more than 30 years at Hitotsubashi University, one of the oldest national universities in Japan. He has been a member or chairperson of many committees and study groups in some government departments and local governments. He was a member of the Subcommittee on Disclosure of Administrative Information of the Administrative Reform Committee (1995–1996), Japanese Government. He was a chairperson of the Working Party on Personal Data Protection of the Information Technology (IT) Strategy Headquarters (1999–2000) (former Advanced Information and Telecommunications Society Promotion Headquarters) headed by Prime Minister. He has been a Vice-Chairperson of the Working Party on Information Security and Privacy (since 1996) set up under the Information, Computer and Communications Policy Committee, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). He has written extensively in the area of information and privacy law. The 21st impression of one of his books entitled Privacy in an Advanced Information Society (1988, Iwanamishoten Publisher) was made in 2001.