The chief justice at the Supreme Court secretly met with the U.S. ambassador to Japan in 1959 shortly before the top court overturned a lower court ruling that had declared the U.S. forces' presence in Japan was unconstitutional, according to a diplomatic document.

Shoji Niihara, a 76-year-old international affairs researcher, has found the document -- a telegraph message that then Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II sent to the U.S. secretary of state on April 24, 1959 -- at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Niihara criticized the U.S. action. "A foreign government representative's contact with the chief justice who was in charge of the trial and who headed the judicial branch of Japan's government constitutes interference of Japan's domestic affairs and a violation of the independence of the three branches of government."

The message shows that MacArthur met with Kotaro Tanaka, then chief justice of the Supreme Court who presided over the trial of the so-called Sunagawa case, to ask him about the schedule of the trial at the Supreme Court.

It stated that the deadline for presenting documentation setting forth justification for the appeal of the lower court ruling was set for June 15, adding that Foreign Ministry officials said deliberations on the appeal by the Supreme Court grand bench would probably commence by mid-July.

However, it said it was impossible at that stage to estimate the timing of the ruling.

The message then read: "In private conversation Chief Justice Tanaka told ambassador that while case had been given priority, under Japanese procedures after deliberations begin it would take at least several months for decision to be reached."

The message came about a month after the Tokyo District Court ruling on the Sunagawa case on March 30, 1959.

In the case, seven people who were opposing the presence of U.S. forces in Japan were indicted for destroying a fence and illegally entering U.S. Tachikawa base in western Tokyo in July 1957 in a bid to obstruct a location survey in connection with the expansion of the base.

The Tokyo District Court acquitted all of them after declaring the presence of U.S. forces in Japan under the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty constitutes a violation of war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

Prosecutors appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court instead of the Tokyo High Court. The Code of Criminal Procedure allows prosecutors to appeal a district court ruling that declares legislation is unconstitutional directly to the top court.

In response to an appeal by prosecutors, the Supreme Court scrapped the ruling in December 1959, and ordered the district court to retry the case. The seven were subsequently slapped with fines of 2,000 yen each, and the conviction was later confirmed.

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