## Facts

- Asahi Shigeru, a tuberculosis patient living in a sanatorium, received public assistance under the Livelihood Protection Law, including in-kind medical care and a 600-yen monthly cash allowance for daily necessities set at the maximum level under ministerial standards.
- Welfare officials later discovered Asahi’s elder brother and treated him as legally obligated to support Asahi; the brother remitted 1,500 yen per month.
- The welfare office issued a “change in protection” disposition terminating Asahi’s 600-yen cash allowance and treating the remaining 900 yen as Asahi’s contribution toward medical costs.
- Asahi objected that the benefit standard was too low to satisfy the constitutional minimum living standard and that, as a patient, he needed additional nourishment not covered by sanatorium meals; his administrative objections were rejected.
- Asahi filed suit challenging the ministerial disposition as inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of a minimum standard of wholesome and cultured living and the statute implementing that guarantee.
- Asahi died while the case was pending on appeal; his adopted son sought to continue the action as successor.

## Issues

1. Whether the statutory right to receive public assistance is inheritable such that a beneficiary’s successor may continue litigation after the beneficiary’s death.
2. Whether the constitutional “minimum standard of wholesome and cultured living” provision creates a concrete, judicially enforceable individual right to a particular level of welfare benefits.
3. What level of judicial review applies to the minister’s setting of welfare protection standards and benefit levels under the implementing statute.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Japan (Grand Bench) held that the statutory right to receive public assistance is a legal right but strictly personal to the recipient and noninheritable.
- Because the right extinguished upon Asahi’s death, the adopted son could not succeed to the claim; the lawsuit terminated and was dismissed.
- The Court characterized the constitutional provision on minimum living standards as programmatic rather than directly conferring specific, individually enforceable rights.
- The Court recognized that the implementing statute can create enforceable legal rights to assistance, but their content is concretized by the statute and administrative standards rather than directly by the Constitution.
- The Court held that determining the minimum living standard and specific benefit levels is, in principle, entrusted to the minister’s discretion; judicial intervention is limited to exceptional cases of marked deviation (e.g., setting an extremely low standard that ignores actual living conditions and exceeds or abuses statutory discretion).
- The Court did not reach a merits determination on whether the 600-yen level was unconstitutional or unlawful in Asahi’s circumstances, resolving the case on the noninheritability/termination ground.

## Legal Principles

- Statutory public-assistance entitlements are personal-status rights tied to the recipient’s circumstances and generally do not survive the recipient’s death for inheritance or litigation succession purposes.
- A constitutional guarantee of a minimum standard of living may function as a legislative-policy directive; concrete entitlements ordinarily arise through implementing legislation, not directly from the constitutional text alone.
- Courts may review welfare administration for legality, but challenges to ministerial welfare standards are generally nonjusticiable absent a clear excess or abuse of discretion, such as setting a markedly low standard that disregards real living conditions and defeats statutory and constitutional objectives.
- When a claimant’s personal entitlement is extinguished and no successor right exists, the action is dismissed for lack of a continuing legal interest.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed the case after holding that public-assistance rights under the Livelihood Protection Law are strictly personal and noninheritable, treated the constitutional minimum-living-standard clause as programmatic rather than self-executing, and confined judicial review of welfare standards to rare cases of extreme abuse or excess of administrative discretion.


Asahi v. Japan, 21 Minshu 5, 1043 (S. Ct. Japan 1967)