Notes
1 For points of Introduction, cf. Chiba, 1979.
2 If the Asian cultures were to be adequately represented, some other countries should have been added, particularly China and Indonesia.
But, frankly speaking, it was not possible when this project was drawn up to include all representatives at once. In spite of this lack of a few representative countries, we are convinced of the unprecedented significance of the study of the six countries included herein for the benefit of future advancement of this direction of study.3 As may be clearly understood by the above argument, “law” is used here in a broader meaning not limited to rigid law advocated by model jurisprudence, but including the most systematized, prevalently applicable means of social control valid in a certain society, legitimated by the authority or general consensus of the society, as is referred to in the sociology and anthropology of law. Law, in this meaning, consists of various factors such as rights and duties, positive and negative sanctions, guiding ideas and principles, rules and legislations, and specific institutions as far as identified by formal expressions and certain patterns of behaviour.
4 “Folk law” is the term adopted as the main objective of study by the Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. It is a label to be used to isolate related social phenomena in three levels: first, “the substantive law of social groups of various sorts (other than the modern state)”; second, “involv[ing] social processes, namely procedures and legally-relevant behavior governed by folk law in the first sense”; third, “involved in a variety of kinds of interaction, on the levels of substance and of process, with other folk law and with state law” (from Terms of Reference prepared by the IUAES Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism).
5 “Legal postulate” was first labelled as “basic law” (Chiba, 1979) and then as “jural postulate” (Chiba, 1982). But the essence of the terms are the same.
6 “Indigenous law” has been used by Marc Galanter for another specific meaning: “social ordering which is indigenous... to be found in a variety of institutional settings – in universities, sports leagues, housing developments, hospitals, etc.” (1981: 17–18).