WHAT: Japanese Law: History, Reception and Adaptation/Influence, Conference
WHERE: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Law School, Lee and Elder Rooms, Old College
WHEN: 20 June 2014, 9 am - 5 pm
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Japanese law is
said to have undergone drastic change through the adaptation of Western law in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Many scholars now believe that this
‘westernised’ Japanese law significantly influenced the legal systems of other
Asian countries, including Korea, China, and Thailand. This one-day seminar
will assess the nature of this transformation of Japanese law that took place
amid intense globalisation of the nineteenth century. Among the questions to be
considered are the aspects of Japanese law that changed as the result of the
reception; the processes of this adaptation and its main consequences, domestic
and international.
The seminar will
bring together four specialists in Japanese law and legal history to address
these questions, and will begin with a talk by Professor John W. Cairns, who
will discuss legal transplants and colonialism in the nineteenth century.
Hiroshi Oda, Sir Ernest Satow Professor of Japanese Law at University College
London and the author of Japanese Law (now
a standard textbook), will provide a general
overview of Japanese law, its
history and evolution, emphasising its comparative and commercial aspects.[1] Marie
Seong-Hak Kim, in her recent book Law and
Custom in Korea, claims that the idea of custom as a source of law barely
existed in East Asia prior to the nineteenth century and it was the Japanese
jurists who absorbed the idea from Western jurisprudence and disseminated it
throughout East Asia as colonial agents. Kim will elaborate on this claim.
Hiromi Sasamoto-Collins, who has examined the difficult birth of modern
constitutionalism in Japan in her book, Power
and Dissent in Imperial Japan, will focus on Japan’s first western-style
Criminal Code of 1880, and assess exactly how the Japanese codifiers adopted
legal principles that appeared to be so radically dissimilar to traditional
Japanese legal thought. Matthias Zachmann, the author of China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period and an expert on East
Asian relations and international law, will discuss how the Japanese understood
and misunderstood the notion of international law in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and what were the consequences of such
(mis)conceptions.
In short, the seminar will
investigate the question of reception and adaptation in three major areas,
international law, and the civil and criminal codes, in the Japanese context.
Such perspectives remain essential for the understanding of contemporary
Japanese law, as the Japanese legal system remains more or less grounded in the
legal reforms of the Meiji period (1868–1912) despite significant later
modifications. Such reforms, in turn, then went on to influence the legal systems
of other countries in Asia.
Accordingly the theme of Japanese
adaptation has large implications for studies of legal and cultural
transmission and transmutation. The nineteenth century saw the large-scale
dissemination of Western ideas and institutional arrangements across the globe.
Legal transplantation was part of this global convergence. And yet extra-legal
cultural factors specific to each region or country also intervened in this
process. Thus, if some principles and practices survive cultural barriers and
take root in a different cultural setting, why and how does this happen? The
question may help us to better understand the phenomena of legal convergence
and differentiation that continue to this day. The seminar will focus on the
Japanese experience, but we hope it will open up debate on the general
phenomenon of legal transmission.
Practical
Information:
The workshop will
take place in the Lee and Elder Rooms in Old College on South Bridge. These
rooms may be accessed through the glass doors on the Registry side of Old
College. We shall convene there for 9 am. The rooms are not equipped with AV
equipment so if you are planning to use a presentation or something similar,
please email these to Dr. Sasamoto-Collins no later than a week before the
workshop to allow us to make copies. Each speaker has 60 minutes (45 minutes
for the talk plus 15 minutes discussion).
Programme:
9 – 9.15 am: Dr. Paul du Plessis: Welcome and Contextualisation
9.15 – 10.15 am: Professor John W. Cairns: Transplants and Colonialism: A Prehistory
10.15 – 10.45 am: Tea/Coffee
10.45 – 11.45 am: Professor
Marie Seong-Hak Kim: Sources of Law,
Japanese Style: A Comparative Look at Custom as Official Law
12 noon – 1.30 pm:
Lunch (Ciao Roma Restaurant)
1.30 – 2.30 pm: Dr.
Hiromi Sasamoto-Collins: Legal Transplantation and Linguistic Innovation: The Japanese Criminal Code
of 1880
2.30 – 3 pm: Tea/Coffee
3 – 4 pm:
Professor Matthias Zachmann: A Destructive Reception? - International Law in Japan, 1854-1945
4 - 5 pm: Dr.
Daniel Hedinger: A Response
[1] Owing
to a scheduling conflict, Professor Oda is unable to attend the workshop, but
his paper may still be read and discussed.
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