Masayuki Murayama

Expanding access to lawyers: The role of legal advice centers

Purpose – To find major determinants of access to legal services and consider an effective way of expanding access to lawyers.Methodology – (1) A survey of Japanese individuals between 20 and 70 years of age, conducted in 2005; (2) A survey of visitors at legal advice centers of Bar Associations, conducted in 2007 and (3) A survey of visitors at law offices, also conducted in 2007.Finding – The use of a lawyer for legal services is not affected by income or a general knowledge of the law, but by the past experience of using a lawyer and personal connections with a legal professional. Both lawyers and people have anxieties about each other. Thus, a lawyer wants to accept a client who is introduced by someone that the lawyer knows personally. People who seek legal advice also worry about the cost and the unapproachabilility of lawyers. Direct or indirect personal connections help to reduce such anxieties. This traditional pattern of legal access is found among visitors at law offices. However, visitors at legal advice centers do not have such experience or connections. Legal advice centers, rather than to law offices, could expand access to lawyers more effectively, because the former is easier for people without personal connections to get access to legal advice.Research limitations – The response rate of the office survey is very small.Value of chapter – It contributes to a current debate on what affects the use of a lawyer and suggests a policy for expanding access to lawyers in Japan.

Kawashima and the changing focus on Japanese legal consciousness: a selective history of the sociology of law in Japan

Kawashimas well-known arguments on Japanese legal consciousness represent characteristic concerns of Japanese socio-legal scholarship: comparison between Japan and the West on the one hand, and law and practice on the other. Such concerns originated much earlier, before World War II. Suehiro, the early founder, relied on Ehrlichs idea of living law to make law fit social reality. In contrast, Kawashima urged Japanese people to make modern law ‘our living law’. He also argued that Japanese consciousness was the main cause of the small volume of litigation. This thesis became a focus of empirical research by Japanese and foreign scholars. Kawashima played a significant role in establishing the sociology of law as a subject in law. In subsequent empirical studies, Kawashimas thesis has been critically assessed. Yet the sociology of law as an empirical science and the characteristic concerns his work represents are distinctive features of the sociology of law in Japan.

The origins and development of family conciliation in Japan: a political aspect

Mediation has a peculiar characteristic as a form of dispute resolution. It is ‘all process and no structure’. Because the final agreement is the justification for the procedure, mediation can accept non-legal intervention in order to help both parties reach an agreement. In Japan, conciliation – ‘mediation conducted by lay people’ – was institutionalized much earlier than in the US, the UK and European countries. In the early twentieth century, it was introduced by government not only to reduce the courts workload, but also to promote settlements based on patriarchal and particularistic values. The government had tried to introduce a Western legal system as soon as possible after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, but underlying this encouragement of Western-style law lay the aim of abolishing the extraterritoriality which had been conceded to Western countries. The national slogan during the Westernization process was ‘Preserve the Japanese soul and learn Western techniques’. The first family law drafted by a French law professor offended those in power, because it gave rights to family members and put the married couple at the center of a family. This notion of a family system contradicted that of the dominant class in Japan, which gave the head of a family the power to govern family members and put a male filial line at the center of a family. Therefore, after the re-drafted family law had come into effect, the government planned to exclude all types of family disputes from the ordinary court system. For this purpose, the ‘reform’ of family law, the establishment of a special tribunal, and the introduction of conciliation were planned, though only conciliation was introduced before WWII. After WWII, in the process of postwar reform, all these schemes came to be realized, although family law itself was changed to comply with the new Constitution. Many prewar conciliators kept their positions after the war. Conciliators were usually retired old men or housewives who were chosen by the court for their ‘good common sense’ and social standing. Conciliators were expected to persuade spouses, particularly wives, to repair and sustain relationships, but as people became less and less subservient to official authority, family conciliation came to be criticized as imposing often obsolete and personal views upon spouses. However, conciliators have become indispensable assets for the courts. They form a national organization which is the only national organization to support the courts. Conciliators not only reduce the courts workload but also provide significant political support to the courts. The position of a conciliator as a court official is still attractive for retired people and even lawyers. In so far as this mutually beneficial relationship does not collapse, Japanese family conciliation will survive for the foreseeable future.

Cassandra, Prometheus, and Hubris: the epic tragedy of Fukushima

Abstract Myth is a story of archetypical personas who behave in ways and with motives that we recognize in ourselves. We use myth as a way of reminding ourselves of the relationship between motives, actions, and consequences. Myths can serve either as inspirational or cautionary tales, and sometimes as both. But “myth” can also mean a fabricated story intended to create a false impression, and to achieve storytellers’ ends when they have decided the truth will not suffice. We apply the myth of Cassandra to the millennium-long recorded history of giant tsunamis in Japan. After each of these catastrophes, survivors sought to warn future generations of their recurrences. But, each time, their progeny eventually lost the memory of these lessons, and lost their lives when the next monster wave overwhelmed them. Only when they kept the lessons as living knowledge in everyday life, could they manage to escape from monster tsunamis. In this chapter, we use the myth of Cassandra in conjunction with the myth of Prometheus, the bringer of fire to humankind, as a metaphor for Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power. Government and utility companies built powerful but inherently dangerous cauldrons in the nation’s disaster-prone landscapes, assuring the public they could control the fire’s fury and defend it against nature’s. As images of atomic bomb victims were still vivid and widely shared in Japan, they had to overcome the public fear of radioactivity by fabricating a “myth of safety.” The nuclear disaster made the public distrust the government and utility companies, which lingers in the process of reconstruction from the disaster. Myths can either reveal hidden truths or mask hidden lies. The Japanese people must now learn to distinguish one from the other.