On March 8, 1999, the Yokohama District Court ruled on a case in which Ms. Yukiko Miki, JCLU member, sued the Japanese government and the City of Yokohama with a demand to retract the City’s decision not to disclose to her own university entrance examination scores. She claimed that her right to know her own personal information had been violated. The JCLU has supported the case since 1995. The majority of her counsel are JCLU member lawyers.
In turning down her claim, the District Court held that the City ordinance on public documents disclosure can not be interpreted as guaranteeing the right to know provided for under Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Concerning the disclosure of the National Center Test for University Admissions, the court said that disclosure of its scores harms confidence and cooperation between the National Center for the University Entrance Examination and the government. As for the second examination, which is university-specific, it ruled that nondisclosure is deemed to be justifiable.
Ms. Miki, who is ready to appeal, said that the ruling did not acknowledge the right to know information regarding oneself that is provided for under the Constitution, the ICCPR, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. She also criticized the ruling as not heeding examinees, who are the subject of the test, because it solely upheld the claims of the defendants even though they had failed to specify reasons for non-disclosure.
The JCLU released a statement against the ruling to the effect as follows:
In the first place, examinees have a right to know their test results. In addition, no adverse effects have been reported from universities which open to examinees their own scores on the second examination, such as Nagoya City University, Osaka City University, and Osaka Prefecture University. The same could be true for the National Center Test. Examinees have to select a university based on uncertain information from their self-scoring, which is an infringement of their self-determination in selecting their future course. In the background of this problem lies an institutional defect, namely, educational information is excluded from the Law for the Protection of Personal Data, and the JCLU calls for a drastic revision of this Law.