Is Japan still in the medical Stone Age? A look at American depictions of the medical profession might make you think so. Last Tuesday, NHK had a bunch of celebrities sitting around and rapturously discussing the American hospital soap opera "ER" and its mature take on the physician-patient dynamic. This weekend sees the opening of the new Sean Penn movie, "21 Grams," about a mathematician with a bad ticker who receives a replacement from a guy who is run over by an ex-con. The movie gives the impression that heart transplants are as common as Starbucks openings.

Actually, about 3,000 organ transplants took place last year in the United States, which is a smaller number than it sounds considering that 2.4 million Americans died in the same year. But it's a huge number compared to Japan, where only 30 organ-transplant operations have taken place since they were legalized in 1997.

The Liberal Democratic Party has drawn up a bill to make it easier for Japanese doctors to harvest organs from brain-dead patients. Sponsored by lawmaker Taro Kono, who two years ago donated part of his liver to his father, former president of the LDP Yohei Kono, the bill may not come up during the current session, but it's only a matter of time before it's passed in one form or another.