Taking Kawashima Seriously: A Review of Japanese Research on Japanese Legal Consciousness and Disputing Behavior

This paper discusses Japanese research on legal consciousness (ho-ishiki) and civil disputing. The author presents a recent explication of Takeyoshi Kawashima\u27s concept of legal consciousness as a cultural factor and also proposes to explore the possibility of treating it as an individual, attitudinal factor. He also reviews large-scale surveys of aggregate-level culture and studies on individual-level disputing behavior. The need and possibility of a longitudinal study of individual disputing behavior that uses individual-level attitudes and regional culture as explanatory variables is suggested

Will Penal Populism in Japan Decline?: A Discussion

I intend to play the role of discussant at a session where five papers have been presented and to draw implications from the perspective I presented in Miyazawa (2007a ). I revise my thesis about penal populism in Japan slightly using the concept of leadership from the front presented by Johnson .However, I still conclude that penal populism in Japan is not likely to decline in the near future

How Does Culture Count in Legal Change?: A Review with a Proposal from a Social Movement Perspective

We have in this volume four articles on legal change in China and Japan written by four distinguished authors. These articles vary with regard to subject state, specificity of issues, and breadth of analytical scope. They commonly discuss one factor, however: culture. The purpose of this Comment is to examine the way each article uses culture in its explanations of legal change. The Comment concludes with a brief suggestion, from a social movement perspective, on employing culture as an explanatory tool in a non-essentialist way

How Does Culture Count in Legal Change?: A Review with a Proposal from a Social Movement Perspective

We have in this volume four articles on legal change in China and Japan written by four distinguished authors. These articles vary with regard to subject state, specificity of issues, and breadth of analytical scope. They commonly discuss one factor, however: culture. The purpose of this Comment is to examine the way each article uses culture in its explanations of legal change. The Comment concludes with a brief suggestion, from a social movement perspective, on employing culture as an explanatory tool in a non-essentialist way