Japan's journalists, editors and broadcasters -- indeed, representatives of all of the popular media -- received a stunning surprise from the Osaka High Court last week. In a historic decision with potentially far-reaching consequences, the presiding judge overturned a lower-court ruling that had ordered a magazine publisher to pay 2.5 million yen in damages for printing the name and photograph of a 19-year-old male found guilty of stabbing to death a 5-year-old girl and seriously injuring two people in 1998. Now 21 years old and serving an 18-year prison sentence, the man had claimed that the monthly magazine violated Article 61 of the Juvenile Law and infringed his right to privacy. He appealed to the High Court for increased compensation.

Presiding Judge Makoto Nemoto not only disagreed, he carefully spelled out his reasons for doing so. Saying that Article 61 "is not intended to guarantee that minors who have committed crimes will not have their names published or reported," he rejected the man's claim for 22 million yen, ruling that the article in the reliable monthly was not illegal since it was in the public interest, the details of the case were accurately reported and the youthful offender's name was already widely known in the area where the crime occurred. The judge thus decreed that the article could not be considered to have interfered with his rehabilitation.

Perhaps most surprising was Judge Nemoto's noting that Article 61 lacks any penalty clause and his statement that it thus cannot be interpreted as superseding the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution. Some commentators have voiced fears that his ruling threatens to unleash a torrent of sensational reporting on crimes of violence by minors, in particular the growing number of assaults and killings perpetrated by teenage youths, often for pittances in "amusement" money. The frequent excesses of the country's less reputable tabloid newspapers, pictorial magazines and television "wide shows" point to this real possibility, but early reactions from the media suggest that considerable restraint will still be shown in reporting the personal details of juvenile criminals.