Last October the Supreme Court of Japan unanimously dismissed a young woman's final appeal of an Osaka High Court ruling that had found no illegality in her father's self-admitted act of suddenly touching her breast for a few seconds to "measure her sexual growth" when she was 11 years old.
In November 2005 and May 2006, respectively, Judge Hiromi Morita of the Kyoto District Court and Presiding Judge Seijiro Shimada of the Osaka High Court had dismissed the daughter's appeals mainly on the grounds that the father had a right to touch his child's breast insofar as he fulfilled the parental duty of taking care of his child sufficiently to receive the child's deep trust. (Their judgments were analyzed in a Sept. 15, 2006, article in the Opinion Section of The Japan Times.)
The daughter's final appeal to the Supreme Court was based mainly on the argument that the lower courts had failed to see the illegality of her father's act and that this failure violated integral provisions of human rights contained in Article 13 and 14 of the Japanese Constitute, which stipulate, in part, that every person will be respected as an individual and considered equal under the law.