It has been a decade since the introduction of a law designed to protect whistleblowers, but the system to protect people from unfair treatment by their employers for raising the alarm on wrongdoing does not appear to be serving its purpose. Since the law lacks a provision to sanction companies that punish their whistleblowing employees by dismissing or demoting them, the victims have to take their case to court to get their situation corrected or seek damages. A panel of experts at the Consumer Affairs Agency is compiling a set of recommendations for improving the system, which reportedly includes a call for publicizing the names of businesses that defy government warnings against unlawful treatment of their whistleblowing employees. The bottom line is that the system needs to serve as an effective deterrent against wrongfully treating people for doing the right thing for their organization.

The 2006 law was crafted to protect people from reprisal for stepping forward to identify wrongdoing — even criminal acts — by their colleagues or superiors in businesses or government organizations. The measure was prompted by a series of corporate scandals that came to light through exposure by insiders, including the 2001 incident in which Snow Brand Food committed fraud by falsifying the origin of imported beef to take advantage of the government's domestic beef buyback program following the outbreak of mad cow disease and the coverup of troubles at nuclear power plants run by Tokyo Electric Power that surfaced in 2002.

Whistleblowers are often viewed by their employers as "traitors" to the organization. They can be subjected to harassment from their superiors or demoted to idle positions where they are effectively denied chances to engage in substantial work — possibly lasting until they reach the mandatory retirement age. The law prohibits employers from giving such unfair treatment to workers for blowing the whistle, but it is essentially toothless to stop them in the absence of penalties for violators.