Paradise Lost

For 54 years, Japan has been a drunkard's paradise. Public Law 39, passed in 1907, declared that a man under the influence of alcohol must be considered to be "temporarily unsound of mind," thereby exonerating him of legal responsibility for any crimes committed when drunk. As a result, Japan's tipsy tipplers break store windows, kick dents in car fenders, insult passing women, even commit murder, without fear of lawsuit or punishment. (One jurist estimates that an average of ten murderers a year go scot-free because of P.L. 39.)

The Japanese, who are among the world's politest people when sober, are notoriously violent when drunk. One word for a drunk in Japanese is tora--tiger. The police have been prohibited by the law from taming a tora unless he becomes overtly violent. Even then they could only politely take him into protective custody, put him in a paddy wagon whose walls were padded with foam rubber for his own protection, lock him up overnight, release him with a lecture in the morning. One remedial variation: tape-recording his drunken expostulations, then playing the tape back to his glowering wife when she came to pick up the limp tiger next day.

Last week the gates of paradise banged shut. The Japanese Diet voted a bill making the drunk responsible for his acts. Pushed through after three years of lobbying by female Diet members, the bill pointedly allows police to enter private homes at the request of family members beleaguered by a drunk. "What is the world coming to," cried one Dietman into his beer, "when a man's own wife can have him arrested merely for beating her up while drunk?"

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