Japan
Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs
Act No. 42 of 1999
Japan's national access law. Anyone may file, from anywhere, for a ¥300 fee — but responses issue in Japanese.
The clock
30 calendar days
Disclosure decision within 30 days of the request, extendable by 30; very large requests may be answered in instalments.
In September 2020 the Defense Minister ordered SDF units to record and report unidentified aerial objects and preserve imagery — that instruction created the record class worth asking for.
Reading the statute itself
The text of this one is not reproduced here: foreign legislation is published under its own country’s copyright rules, so it is linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.
If they refuse
- Appeal deadline
- 90 days — three months to seek administrative review
- Appeal route
- Administrative review referred to the Information Disclosure and Personal Information Protection Review Board, or suit in district court.
- Litigation
- District court; venue rules were loosened specifically for disclosure suits.
Fees and expedition
Fee-waiver standard
¥300 application fee per request, plus copying charges.
Aletheca argues this on every request it files here. A service that publishes every page it receives, free, to a public archive has an unusually strong showing — considerably stronger than a private requester’s.
Exemptions it allows
- Art. 5(iii) Defense and diplomacy
- Art. 5(iv) Public safety
- Art. 5(i) Personal information