The evolving concept of data privacy in Japanese law

Abstract

† How Japan has shaped and evolved the concept of data privacy is examined and how, in this context, it has overcome its culture of respecting the community and the public at the cost of private interests. † The tradition and history of the Japanese culture of privacy is rooted in Bushi-do, which values public interests. After the right to protect private life was judicially recognized in the 1960s, the rapid growth of technology which threatened privacy and personal data led to a new concept of privacy as controlling personal information, as well as to new legislation on protecting personal information. † The Japanese Act of the Protection of Personal Information of 2003, and recent cutting-edge developments regarding privacy are introduced (for example, regarding consumer protection, Google Street View, social networking, Juki-Net, and a new numbering system for social security and taxation in Japan). † Through a mixture of incorporating the Western way of protecting privacy and the Japanese way of respecting the relationship between the 'self' and 'others', privacy protection in Japan is now regarded as the embodiment of society under 'the ideal of respecting the personality of the individual'.