On May 8, COVID-19 will be reclassified as a Class V Infectious Disease under the Infectious Disease Act. In this regard, courts are also gradually returning their practice to normal, such as starting to leave the decision on mask-wearing up to individuals in March.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts must also have experienced an unprecedented situation with a need to implement measures for preventing the spread of infection and speed up proceedings at the same time. What kinds of insights did courts gain through this experience? Please also tell us about the important points for courts in preparing for any similar situation that may occur in the future.

Amid the prolonged spread of COVID-19, courts have maintained their function to solve disputes to a maximum extent through initiatives including formulation of infection control measures based on professional knowledge in public health and other relevant fields, by obtaining advice from experts, and active use of digital technology, such as web conferencing. I would like to once again express our gratitude to court users and other citizens for their understanding and cooperation in infection control measures, such as restriction of the number of seats for the audience and the wearing of masks, and special practices adopted in litigation proceedings, as well as to experts for providing us with advice.

Through such experience, we have realized that the use of digital technology in litigation proceedings and coordination with the government and other related organizations as well as experts are effective and important for courts to maintain their functions as the juridical branch under the spread of infectious disease. Also from the viewpoint of preparing for infectious disease that may break out in the future, I think there is a need to conduct further studies on a wide-ranging use of digital technology by, for example, assuming a situation where visits to courts become restricted.

The Business Court opened in Nakameguro, Tokyo, in October last year. Being Japan's first court that specializes in handling business-related litigation, what roles do you expect the Business Court to play?

In addition, the Business Court is highly information technology-oriented, as represented by the introduction of many exclusive booths for web conferencing. While there is growing anticipation that litigation proceedings will be sped up with the introduction of information technology (hereinafter "IT") in the proceedings in the future, how do you think the presence of courts will change for citizens going forward?

Business-related cases, such as intellectual property disputes, commercial or economic disputes, and business rehabilitation or bankruptcy proceedings, need to be resolved very quickly and are often international. It is also considered that litigation representatives, etc. involved in these cases have high expertise and an international mind, and are often positive about using digital technology. I expect that the Business Court, which deals with such cases and people, will become a new court that precisely responds to user needs and plays a part in strengthening the international competitiveness of Japan's civil justice through practices where court officials and litigation representatives, etc. mutually improve their expertise by learning from each other from a professional standpoint and making exchanges with overseas legal professionals and make full use of digital technology, for example.

In order to ensure the rule of law, courts must be a familiar and reliable presence for citizens. To realize this, the speeding up of litigation proceedings is an important challenge not only for the Business Court, but for all courts, and we need to aim at conducting digitalization of litigation proceedings in a way that contributes to making the overall litigation proceedings more rational and efficient and to also speeding up the proceedings. From such viewpoint, courts nationwide are earnestly studying rational and efficient proceedings that utilize digital technology, while gaining the understanding and cooperation of litigation representatives, etc.

Recently, litigation concerning diversity, such as gender change and same-sex marriage, has drawn attention. Please tell us your view on what kinds of viewpoints are required of courts and judges that will be making important determinations which would affect what the future society would be like, and how they should respond to the opinions of the parties concerned?

It is difficult to give a specific answer to this question, as it concerns various specific cases. However, in general terms, judges are basically required to have the qualities and abilities to flexibly understand the essence of the diverse interests and conflicts of values underlying a dispute, with a broad perspective and deep insights, conduct appropriate fact-finding and interpretation of laws and regulations, and make a convincing determination. In that sense, the same thing can be said about new social issues that arise in association with the diversification of citizens' values and minds.

In order to acquire such qualities and abilities, judges need to make proactive and independent efforts to improve their discernment through everyday work and life. Courts intend to continue supporting individual judges' efforts through various types of training, etc.

I would like to ask you about the retrial system. Recently, commencement of a retrial was decided for the Hakamada case. With regard to the retrial system, there have been persistent calls for the development of legal systems for retrials. A person who has an experience as a judge has also indicated that the enactment of relevant provisions would also be effective for judges' control of court proceedings. Regarding this point, I would like to ask for your view on what would be required for courts in the future in regard to the retrial system.

I think what should be done with the retrial system in the future is a matter of legislative policy that would be considered by the government or the legislative branch going forward. However, regarding the practice of the so-called disclosure of evidence, for example, under the current system, I recognize that each judge panel is conducting appropriate practices according to the circumstances of individual cases, on the premise that the details of the cases for which a retrial is requested are extremely varied.

In that sense, I am not in a position to state whether the practices under the current system are sufficient or not. I believe that this point will be appropriately assessed in the future study processes of legislative policy, etc.

While this question is slightly off the topic of the Constitution, courts are currently promoting the introduction of IT in proceedings, as you mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, recently there have been moves in society to use IT in litigation by, for example, preparing briefs by using ChatGPT or the like. Under such circumstances, I would like to ask for your view on the meaning of not AI but human judges conducting proceedings and rendering a judgment.

Text-generating AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, are showing rapid progress, and I think their use is being considered in various settings. However, the question of whether and how they should be used in court proceedings needs to be studied from diverse aspects, or else problems would occur. We are not specifically studying such use at present, but I consider that there would naturally be a problem of reliability of the contents, and while it is said that such machines, or AI, process information and make decisions probabilistically, I believe that the work of court proceedings cannot necessarily be covered by such approach alone.

Therefore, while it is an important viewpoint to make various uses of digital technology in court practices and improve efficiency as much as possible, the essence of human judges conducting court proceedings will not change. Therefore, I think we need to deal with this issue carefully, also from the viewpoint of how such technologies would affect the future development of human resources who will take charge of court proceedings as judges.

I would like to ask you about the issue of disposal of records. It has successively been found that records of important juvenile and civil cases, such as the serial child murder case in Kobe, have been discarded. Please give us your comment on this matter and your view on how records should be preserved and disposed of.

With regard to the series of problems concerning preservation and disposal of records after the judgement becomes final and binding, I understand it is hard to say that all courts have conducted appropriate practices compliant with the purport of relevant rules and notices. I am taking the criticisms from various quarters very seriously. We are currently investigating and studying this issue of preservation and disposal of records while receiving objective third-party evaluation. Looking at how this issue developed, I think we need to take measures that will prevent future recurrence after sufficiently analyzing not only individual officials' determinations or behavior, but also circumstances underlying such structure, etc. that led to the problem.

In that sense, I consider that we must first sufficiently conduct the current investigation while seeking the opinions of third-party experts, and then study measures to be taken with due consideration to the fundamental form of the system and other factors based on the investigation results.