More than 1,800 criminal cases reached Japan's Supreme Court on appeal in fiscal 2009. But 98.01 percent of them were thrown out without a hearing. The situation is not much different with civil cases. This trend has chipped away at the very foundation of the nation's three-tier judiciary system, in which a ruling by a district court may be appealed to a high court and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

A veteran attorney has lamented: "Virtually all of the appeals filed with the Supreme Court are rejected in examinations conducted behind closed doors and less than two percent of the cases are sent to the 15 justices for review. I have experience with this. Only two months after acknowledging the receipt of my application for appeal, the top court sent me a notice of rejection. I was so surprised.

"In addition to judging the constitutionality of laws, the Supreme Court is supposed to be responsible for determining whether there was a serious misinterpretation of facts in lower court rulings. With the court's doors so tightly closed, there is no way of saving innocent people from false charges."