Yoshikazu Ebisu seems an unlikely advocate for judicial reform. The 59-year-old illustrator first gained notoriety in the 1970s for his crude caricatures and moved on to variety shows in the late '80s, where his bumbling slob persona was the perfect target for insult comics. After he was arrested for betting at a Kabuki-cho mah-jongg parlor in 1998 he was blackballed from TV for three months. It was a light sentence as far as show-biz scandals go, but appropriate given that Ebisu's gambling jones is well-known and fortifies his media image as a layabout.

So what was he doing last May in Tokyo Shimbun discussing the lay-judge system that goes into effect in 2009? Apparently, he was representing the little guy's opinion, which is against it. In a survey conducted last February by the Cabinet Office, 33 percent of the respondents said they don't want to be lay judges, while another 44 percent said they will participate if summoned but only because they'd have to.

Ebisu says that at his age he wants to work as little as possible, and to him sitting in a courtroom and listening to lawyers argue a case is work. Moreover, he feels "it's presumptuous for someone like me to judge others." As a TV tarento (media celebrity), he sometimes inadvertently angers viewers. People have thrown things at his house. It's part of the job, "but I would never want to be put on trial by those people."