Don’t let me down: Japanese superfans lose fight for Beatles footage

It’s been a hard day’s fight, but a group of Japanese Beatles fans have lost their bid to get police to hand over historic footage of the band’s 1966 Japan visit. The superfans took their battle for the film – recorded by police as a security measure – all the way to Japan’s supreme court, arguing that the images were a “historical document”. Police had offered to release the footage – reportedly about 35 minutes long – but only after blurring the faces of everyone in it except The Beatles, citing privacy reasons. Two lower courts backed the police against a group of citizens from Nagoya who wanted the entire film released uncensored, saying it would be almost impossible to identify people in the footage more than 50 years later. But the long and winding legal battle ended last week when the supreme court rejected their argument, the group announced. The Beatles toured Japan only once, playing five concerts, and were followed across the country by legions of screaming fans.