Abstract
The first section clarifies the conceptual framework that defines legal dispute as a strategic alternative chosen by the parties to a conflict mobilising the resources of legal system based on validly binding rules, and differentiates it from political, group, and community disputes respectively. The article then traces major developments in the problem setting of the Japanese scholars in the field: (1) Kawashima's model of legal adjudication held against the premodern, native Japanese model, narrowly focusing on the underdeveloped law consciousness of disputants; (2) enlargement, along the same line of modernising perspective, of the relevant factors determining the dispute settlement processes and inclusion of out-of-court settlement arenas in the analysis; (3) critical studies not only of the legal attitudes of the populous but also of the practices of courts and lawyers; and finally (4) proliferations in the 80's of new approaches taking the prevailing patterns as given and exploring different models for explaining them, rather than critically assessing their contributions to the legal order. The article concludes with a welcoming note for the variety of perspectives with a touch of warning against their degenerating into endless rhetorical contests.
