This paper deals with the Kenchiku-Kyotei [construction agreement] system. This system, which resembles the deed restriction or restrictive covenant systems in the United States, is used especially in suburban areas in Japan in order to protect the residential environment of the neighborhood by utilizing contractual agreements to establish restrictions on land use.
This paper sets forth a study of two dispute settlements involving Kyotei areas, one case concerning a violation of height-control restrictions and the other concerning construction above flood control basins.
This study reveals intersections between the legal system and the world of everyday life when people seek to enforce legal rules in the neighborhood. These intersections can be analyzed from four different viewpoints, that is, social role, expertise, de facto operation of organizations, and social norms.
As Giddens puts it, we should not assume either that an abstract legal system "colonises" our everyday world, nor, on the contrary, that such a system operates without reference to the social relations or day-to-day contacts with others.
Rather than make either such assumption, we should observe and analyze the intersection between law and everyday life, as well as the manner in which systems operate in practice, as those phenomena actually occur. Through such concrete observation, we find that, in the urban area, people are reembedded in social relations and construct their concrete everyday lives by skirting the abstract legal system.
