Introduction
of China. However, even despite long periods of isolationism, Japan's wartime aggression and its subsequent security alliance with the United States, Japan has deep connections with China.
In all aspects of culture - language, religion, diet and more - Japan has drawn heavily from the Asian continent. European and American influences, though clear from any visit to Japan, are merely the latest catalysts for generations of local hybridisation and innovation. The ethnic composition of Japan is similarly made up of waves of immigration over millenÂnia. Groups in Japan include the majority wajin (comprising roughly at least 95 per cent of the population), Chinese, Koreans, the indigenous Ainu and - more recently - South Americans, immigrants from SoutheastAsia and to some extent Europeans.Japan, both generally and with regard to its law and legal institutions, has often been portrayed - particularly in the English literature - as a series of contradictions:[270] modern yet with ancient traditions; very formal yet preferÂring opaque informality; Asian yet with Western aspects; inwardly focused yet internationally engaged; rationally driven towards universality yet irrationally unique; and so forth. While these characterisations may be helpful, particularly for someone with no background in Japan whatsoever, they tend to perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes, insufficiently acknowledge the inherent contradictions in all societies, and fail to consider fully the context which, when examined closely, makes the supposed contradictions melt away.
A fuller appreciation of its legal traditions, practices and institutions makes Japan less exotic, but much more accessible to the outsider. As with all modern legal systems, some of these institutions are influenced by hundreds of years of practice - albeit not always under the same names as in current usage[271] - while other institutions are newer, influenced by modern practice of foreign systems. Interestingly, the literature available in English has emphasised the legal institutions over the black letter law of Japan.[272] This is largely because the black letter law is unremarkable in its divergence from other systems: murder as a legal condition in Japan looks much the same as in other systems and the same is true for a variety of other substantive laws such as corporations, tort and administrative law.
Nevertheless, how Japan works through legal issues and conflicts is unique - like all systems - to its context, which is largely dependent on its legal institutions.While conscious of the risk and limitations of the English language literature on Japanese law, this chapter too emphasises the legal institutions over black letÂter law, and differences over similarities. We discourage readers from taking from this a sense that substantive law is unimportant in Japan, and that Japanese law significantly diverges from other legal systems. Rather, given the task of setting out Japanese law and legal institutions within a very limited space, covering the material from this perspective is both more interesting and more efficient. At the outset it is also worth noting that the past decade (1996-2005) has seen tremenÂdous law reform in Japan. To name but a few, a new quasi-jury system to hear all serious criminal cases was passed in 2004 effective from 2009; an independent corporations statute came into force in 2005; and the shape and composition of legal education and the legal profession was completely revamped from 2004. Therefore, in many regards this chapter attempts to define what is a quickly evolving and changing system that will likely result in significantly different legal institutions in the future.
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