After two decades of on-and-off arguments, the Diet finally passed a freedom of information bill into law last Friday. For the first time in Japan's history, a law stipulates that the government "has the duty to explain to the nation" the way government ministries and agencies run their affairs. To be put into force in 2001, this law should serve well one of the basic principles of democracy: Access to information is essential for the public to be able to keep an eye on the government.

The need for an information-disclosure law was first discussed in 1979, when extraordinary revelations made during the Lockheed scandal trials triggered public calls for greater transparency in the murky Japanese political system. In subsequent years, however, successive Liberal Democratic Party governments managed to kill every single "official document-disclosure bill" sponsored by the opposition.

Traditionally, information held by the government was treated strictly on a need-to-know basis during the long years of LDP rule. Resistance to disclosure remains strong within the LDP even today. Indeed, toward the final stages of Diet debate on the bill, some Liberal Democrats expressed their concern that such a law could give "a mistaken notion of direct supervision by the people" and encourage "a negation of the parliamentary representative system."