Reiwa 5 (Gyo-U) No. 3 Damages and Other Claims Case (Resident Suit)

In 2025, a group of residents filed a resident lawsuit against the mayor of a Japanese city, seeking compensation for the alleged illegal expenditure of public funds. The city had subsidized a public exhibition held in 2023 featuring a statue symbolizing “comfort women,” a deeply contentious historical issue between Japan and South Korea. The plaintiffs argued that the subsidy violated the Local Autonomy Act and wasted taxpayer money by endorsing a politically charged narrative that contradicted official government positions. The case, originally docketed as a resident suit in 2023, was adjudicated in 2025.

The district court dismissed the residents' claims, ruling that the subsidy fell within the broad discretionary authority of the mayor for cultural promotion and did not constitute a clear, illegal misuse of public funds.

Whether the municipal government’s use of public funds to subsidize an exhibition with a specific political and historical stance on the comfort women issue constituted an illegal expenditure, exceeding the mayor’s discretionary power and harming the financial interests of the residents.

The ruling deepened domestic divisions over how local governments engage with Japan-Korea historical controversies. It prompted heated public debate on the limits of administrative discretion in politically sensitive cultural projects and temporarily strained local sister-city exchanges with South Korea.