(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A year-old district court ruling dismissing a wife's claim against the bar hostess mistress of a Japanese businessmen is reverberating through the legal community and may soon be taken up as a new feminist cause celebre.
Judge Masamitsu Shiseki of the Tokyo District court, dismissed a complaint that a woman had brought against the bar hostess seeking Yen 4 million ($32,000) as compensation to the psychological damage that the long-term relationship had caused.
Adultery has been legal in Japan since 1947, and the matter before the court was a civil suit. It was actually judged in April 2014, but did not become general knowledge until the decisions and their implications were discussed in the recent issue a legal journal called the Hanri Times.
The judge argued that the case was purely a business decision on the part of the bar hostess, who used sexual favors to keep one of her favored customers coming back, known in Japan as "pillow sales." Bar hostesses are not strictly speaking prostitutes though they often strike up relationships with customers.
In dismissing the complaint, Judge Shiseki argued that "such conduct does not damage the peaceful marriage life," an opinion that seems likely to infuriate feminists in Japan and to open more debate in Japan on adultery.
The plaintiff's attorney Katsuyuki Aoshima blasted the ruling as setting a "vicious precedent," and potentially loosening the strictures against out-right prostitution. It seemed to suggest that relations involving exchange of money were okay.
The ruling also went against several precedents in which the plaintiff's wife was, in fact, awarded damages from the woman who had a relationship with her husband. In this case, no damages were awarded and no appeal was made to a higher court.
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