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1 Law Japan 141 (1967)
Issues in the After the Banquet Decision

handle is hein.journals/lij1 and id is 161 raw text is: NOTES
ISSUES IN THE AFTER THE BANQUET
DECISION
Utage no Ato Hanketsu no Mondai-ten
Masami Ito
Translated by Carl J. Bradshaw
From jurisuto (Jurist) no. 309, at 47-51
(Nov. 1, 1964)
PREFACE
It has attracted public attention that the Tokyo District Court has rendered a judgment
which awarded the greater part of the compensation for damages requested by the
plaintiff in the After the Banqueta trial, the first case in our country directly to take up
the matter of the right of privacy.b As regards this judgment, there are some dissenters
in the field of literature who object to the degree of restriction thus imposed on their
writing, but, in general, it seems to have been welcomed here in our country, where a
sense of respect for the private life of the individual is lacking, due to its significance
as a warning against those-particularly in the mass media like some weeklies-who
have often meddled in personal matters and sacrificed them to commercialism. While
this decision embraces only one of the multifarious aspects of the right of privacy and
has not clarified the entire picture, still, since it grants stronger protection to privacy
than was expected and sets a direction for future development, it is felt that its effects
will be widespread.
Note. Mr. Ito is Professor of Law, Tokyo University. B. Jur., 1943, Tokyo Imperial Uni-
versity; Dr. Jur., 1960, Tokyo University. Mr. Bradshaw is the Director of Far Eastern Opera-
tions, Oak Electrol Netics Corp. B.S., 1952, LL.B., 1957, University of Minnesota; LL.M.,
1958, University of Michigan; M. Jur., 1962, Keio Gijuku University.
Footnotes in the original article are indicated by arabic numerals and translator's footnotes
by lower case letters.
a. Utage no Ato (After the Banquet) is a novel written by Yukio Mishima as a thinly veiled
account of Hachiro Arita, the 1960 Socialist candidate for governor of Tokyo Metropolis.
An English translation of the book, bearing the same title, was published in the United States
by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963.
b. Arita v. Hiraoka, Tokyo District Court, Sept. 28, 1964, Hanrei jiho (The Case Journal)
no. 385, at 12. Strangely the standard case reporter Kakyil Saibansho Minji Saiban Reisha
(A Collection of Civil Cases in the Inferior Courts) did not see fit to select this landmark
decision for publication.
The case was settled by compromise on November 28, 1966 while on appeal in the Tokyo
High Court. Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 28, 1966, p. 11, col. I (evening ed.).

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