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"Trials shall be held in public." Article 82 of the Constitution states this. It is thought to be a provision to ensure the fairness of trials. What is the reality of openness?

Today, the phrase "right to information" has become a powerful phrase advocated by open government activists around the world. Toby Mendel, one of the world's leaders in the open government movement, recently wrote:

An extraordinary situation has arisen in which a leader of a movement protesting against the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa to Henoko and the construction of a helipad in Takae has been detained for more than 140 days. Such long-term detention violates international human rights standards.

When three antiwar activists were detained by the Tokyo police for 75 days in 2004, the Nobel Prize-winning international rights group, Amnesty International, formally declared them to be “prisoners of conscience,” thus tarring Japan’s reputation with a brush that is ordinarily reserved for the world’s most oppressive regimes...............

Japan’s open government activists hailed the adoption of the national Public Records and Archives Management Act (“Public Records Act”) as a milestone in government accountability. When that law took effect on April 1, 2011, government agencies were legally required to make and preserve records ...........

Japan is facing a constitutional crisis. The ruling coalition seeks to pass legislation that would overturn the nation’s longstanding prohibition of “collective self-defense.” Expert opinion is nearly unanimous that these proposals violate Article 9, the peace provision of Japan’s Constitution. ..................