Under the series of "Distinctive" and Universal Feature of Japanese law, we deal with sociology of law in land law.
Land law and problems relating to land have been the main topics in post-war sociology of law. Three great scholars did remarkable achievement in land law. Dr. Masao Fukushima studied the establishment of modern property system in Meiji era, Dr. Takeyoshi Kawashima studied theoretical foundation of law of property and did extensive research on the dissolution of right in common. Dr. Mititaka Kaino studied the early development of right in common in forestry and in 1950s did practical participant observation in a village Kotsunagi in northern Japan.
Scholars of next generation expanded the frontier of studies of various common right including water right, right in fishery, mining right. In 1960s problem of urban land became important and many studies appeared in allocation, price control and regulation.
With these development in view, we picked three topics, right in common, farm land and urban land.
We have three reports on sociology of land law. Professor Nakao, authority on right in common, discusses the modernization of right in common after the Act of 1966 which purports to modernize legal relation. Professor Takahashi reports on law of farm land after the post-war land reform. Third report is Professor Harada's recent development of urban land, regulation, and urban renewal.

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The Civil Code (of Japan) approved Iriaiken as a property right, but the law concerning the registration of immovables did not approve the registration of Iriaiken. Therefore as the use and movement of the land increased, Iriai-land had been put under in unstable situation.
In prewar times, the administrative organ denied Iriaiken on the state forest and dissolved Iriaiken on the public owned land, and in postwar days, it promoted to dissolve Iriaiken by the undertaking of Iriai-rinya preparation. On the other hand the Court approved Iriaiken on the state forest and declared that Iriaiken had nothing to do with registration, and approves the existence of Iriaiken despite the change of form in Iriaiken.

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Right of Common (Iriai-Ken) is an ownership of mura communities. This Right of Common has declined during 130 Years in Modern Japan. But This Right has not extinct, yet. The Future form of this right may be in three, i.e. (1) will become a joint ownership based on individualistic ownership order, (2) continue to exist as community ownership (Soyu), (3) change to a public right of local government. We must think about the future use of common lands and the theoretical basis of Iriai-Ken.

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Im Bereich der Rechtssoziologie gab es früher insbesondere bis in die 60er Jahre viele Kontroversen über die Probleme von landwirtschaftlichem Bodenrecht. Man kann z.B. die Kontroversen über das landwirtschaftliche Erbrecht, die Verdinglichung des Pachtrechts, das landwirtschaftliche Wasserrecht usw. anführen. Diese Tendenz ist aus den drei folgenden Punkten interessant. 1) Diese Kontroversen hatten einen gemeinsamen Zweck, die Modernisierung und Demokratisierung der ländlichen Gemeinschaft zu realisieren. Dort war "das lebende Recht" nur ein Gegenstand der Kritik und Reform. 2) Diese Kontroversen wurde alle von privatrechtlichen Fachleute getragen und die Fachleute des öffentlichen Rechts haben grundsätzlich keine Beziehung zu diesen Kontroversen gehabt. 3) Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg wurde ein Gesetz über das landwirtschaftlichen Bodenrecht in 1952 als fundamentales Gesetz im Bereich des Agrarrechts erlassen. Trotzdem hat man im Bereich der Rechtssoziologie über dieses Gesetz relativ wenig diskutiert.
Aber in den letzten Zeit steht dieses Gesetz vor der schwierigen Situation insbesondere wegen des Verlangens über die Widmungsänderung der landwirtschaftlichen Grundstücke von anderen Wirtschaftsbereichen und des Verlangens über die schnelle Mobilisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Grundstücke. Ich finde es sehr wichtig, die gegenwärtige Bedeutung und Rolle dieses Gesetzes nochmals zu überprüfen.
Von meiner Betrachtung sind die drei folgenden Schlüsse abgeleitet. 1) Die Mobilisierung der Grundstücke ist natürlich wichtig, aber die Sicherung der rechtlichen Grundlage vom Pachtrecht ist auch gleichzeitig wichtig. Die Familienbetriebe sollen noch die grundsätzliche Rolle im Bereich der Landwirtschaft behalten. Das Gesetz über landwirtschaftliches Bodenrecht paßt sich diesen Förderungen an und es stört nicht die Mobilisierung der Grundstücke. 2) Über die Widmungsänderung des landwirtschaftlichen Grundstucks soll der Rahmen dieses Gesetzes beibehalten werden, weil das japanische Städtebaurecht zu einseitig ist, um die ungünstigen Einwirkungen des Städtebaus auf die Landwirtschaft zu verhüten. 3) Die ländliche Gemeinschaft wurde früher nur "negativ" bewertet. Aber man soll diese Gemeinschaft als Träger der angemessenen Bodennützung eher "positiv" bewerten, weil diese Kommunität ein Selbstverwaltungskreis auf dem Land ist.

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Ich stimme seiner Meinung grundsätzlich zu. Aber sie soil in den drei folgenden Punkten ergänzt werden.
1) Der erste ist über die Verdinglichung des landwirtschaftlichen Pachtrechts. Es gab seit der Taisho-Zeit eine Kontroverse darüber, ob man dem landwirtschaftlichen Pächter das Eigentum geben soll oder sein Pachtrecht als dingliches Recht verfestigen soll. Der erste Weg wurde in der landwirtschaftlichen Bodenreform, die kurz nach dem zweiten weltkrieg durchgeführt, ausgewählt. Danach hat die japanische Regierung ein Ziel verfolgt, die rechtliche Grundlage des landwirtschaftlichen Pachtrechts zu sichern durch der langfristigen Fortsetzung des Pachtverhältnises und der gezwungenen Vereinbarung über den Pachtzins. Ich finde es sehr wichtig, die Grundlage des Pachtrechts zu sichern, aber man muß davor warnen, daß die Verfestigung des Pachtrechts zu der Verdinglichung des Rechts führt.
2) Die ländliche Gemeinschaft kann zweiartig funktionieren, wenn die städtische Entwicklung einen Einfluß auf die Landwirtschaft ausübt. Sie funktioniert einmal gegen dieser Entwicklung, einmal für sie.
3) Die gegenwärtige Situation der Landwirtschaft in Japan ist ganz schwierig insbesondere wegen des Verlangens über die Öffentlichkeit des japanischen agrarischen Marks. Die japanische Regierung bezweckt die Förderung der landwirtschaftlichen Strukturverbesserung durch der Mobilisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Grundstücke. Dabei ist es aber auch sehr wichtig, die rechtliche Grundlage der Pächter sicherzustellen.

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Urban land problems are rooted in the contradictory fact that land, which is the physical common space in which citizens live and act together, is compartmentalized and made the object of private, individual and monopolistic ownership rights. In an attempt to resolve this contradiction from the point of view of society as whole, national and local governments and so-called urban communities have devised various policies and regulations regarding urban land ownership.
At first, this paper reviews existing researches of sociology of law on these land legal systems, emphasizing the following four points:
a) Arguments regarding the special characteristics of land ownership rights.
b) Critical anlysis of the aims, character and functions of positive legal systems: monopolization of "public interest" by the state; the "public or communal interest" embodied in land use planning; land price measures, etc.
c) Trends in local gouverment policies and the roles played by communities in urban development: multi-layered structures of the frameworks within which "citizens' communities" are formed.
d) Special legal characteristics of the Japanese urban land law system: laws for administration and real estate promoters; the weakness of normative restraints and the importance of negotiation; limitations on the ability of citizen to raise objections through litigation.
Following this review, the paper describes current trends and issues which should be analyzed from the point of view of sociology of law: (1) "Post-Bublle" urban land problems and the impact on land legal systems of the Kobe Earthquake; (2) the necessity of realizing citizen participation and control procedures as decentralization continues; (3) new social demands to which land legal systems must adapt, such as the preservation of nature and the environment, and the achievement of a nationwide balance in the use of land.

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1 Introdution
2 Definition of the "conflicts relating to environmental problems" and theoretical approach to them by sociology of law
3 Histories of conflicts relating to environmental Problems
4 Facts finding of conflicts relating to environmental problems
5 Birth of conflicts relating to environmental problems and their development
6 Resolution types of conflicts relating to environmental problems

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This report is focused on the legal aspect and human or organisational aspect of the defective legal systems in the environmental law. The first part is the defects of legal systems themselves and the second part is the defective behavior or organisation of administrative agency.

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1. Today, we must consider many new aspects in recent environmental problems. Firstly, the recent environmental problems have extended over three main fields; 1) pollution-related problems, 2) nature-related problems and 3) amenity-related problems. Secondly, we have to pay much attention not only to the level of "environmental damages", but also to the level of "environmental risks" and "environmental effects". Thirdly, the recent environmental problems have extended from local issues to global issues. Finally, the recent environmental problems have to be considered in light of the past, present and future.
2. In the field of law, how to establish new ideas, new rules and new systems related to "environmental rights" and "environmental responsiblities" are very important issues. From the viewpoint of environmental economics, how to establish new ideas, new rules and new systems related to the economic allocation of "environmental benefits" and "environmental costs" are also very important issues. We need more cooperations between environmental law reseachers and environmental economists.

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(1) Environmental Problems and the Perspective of Environmental Sociology
(2) Recently interest in the field of environmental sociology has grown dramatically within Japan as well as the United States and internationally. The Japanese Association for Environmental Sociology which was set up in 1990 already has 149 members (now 200) including other social scientists, natural scientists and environmentalists.
Japanese environmental sociologists have mainly focused on pollution problems and environmental problems at the local community level in contrast with typical American interests in the topics of population, energy and resources at the global level.
One of the major controversies in the field is on the definition of environmental sociology. Riley Dunlap advocated that environmental sociology should be an alternative way based on the "New Ecological Paradigm" beyond the sociology of environmental issues remained within "Human Exceptionalism Paradigm". But some scholars criticized the new paradigm resulted in vain and stressed the field survey and the analysis of substantial problems.
A major opinion among Japanese scholars is that environmental sociology should focus on 1) the structure of victims, 2) the policy and the decision making process and 3) the movements and collective activities of the deprived people. I believe some scholars of sociology of law, Prof. Awaji, Abe and Yamamura, also share these interests.
Especially in one sense Japanese social movements face a deadlock. The Japanese judiciary and administration seem to succeed in maintaining the "repressive role" of law. But the price of the low responsiveness is the absence of a social movement sector that can act as a collaborative partner in policy making process and an inflexible of administration.

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When Japanese people want to buy, sell or rent real property, we usually use a real estate broker as a go-between in transaction. To establish a relationship with the broker, we enter into an agency agreement.
Despite recent improvements in the legal system, closed-door procedures still persist among brokers. For example, many brokers attach more importance to personal relationships than contracts. Also brokers tend to share information with only a few other brokers.
Until now, no study of these practices has been done. During a four-year period, our research group, headed by Professor Inamoto, surveyed the practices of brokers throughout Tokyo, Osaka and several other prefectures. In the following articles, we will reveal the practices of Japanese brokers and examine the way of real estate transaction in detail.

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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a few practices of contracts for sale of real estate and to point out their problems. We researched Listing Agreement fully and after that we have been investigating contracts for sale of real estate since April, 1994. From the investigation, this paper deals with their practices, forcusing on three points: (1) choice of contract forms for sale of real estate, (2) warranty of habitability and (3) risk of loss.
In most cases we have checked, real estate brokers on the side of sellers choose one of some contract forms of real estate transaction and draw up it. That is why many contracts have tendency to be advantageous to sellers.
Many contracts restrict sellers' responsibility for warranty of habitability; some of them have no provisions for warranty of habitability. However, it should be paid attention to that the subjects of this research are secondhand houses excluding newly-built ones.
As for risk of loss, the provisions of contracts are different from those of the Civil Code. Although the section 534 of the Civil Code provides that creditors (purchasers) should charge risk of loss, in fact, all contracts provide that sellers should charge risk of loss.

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Le droit positif japonais connait une réglementation touchant le mandat de l'agent immobilier, qui se trouve bien comparable avec celle organisée par la loi Hoguet en France. On y trouve, d'une part, des ressemblances franco-japonaises. Pour ne citer qu'un exemple, le mandat exclusif est limité à une durée de trois mois. Il faut, d'autre part, remarquer deux différences suivantes. D'abord, dans le droit japonais, il y a un type hybride situé entre le mandat exclusif et celui jamais exclusif. Il s'agit du mandat où, quoique interdit de recevoir les soins d'autres agents, le mandant peut conclure une opération avec un partenaire qu'il a lui-même réussi à trouver. Ensuite, en cas de mandat exclusif ou de ledit mandat hybride, le mandataire se doit informatiser son mandat avec un des réseaux officiellement désignés par le ministre de la construction, ce qui constitue la clé du marché immobilier du Japon.

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Im Falle eines Vertragsabschlusses legt das Gesetz eine Obergrenze der Makler gebühren in Höhe von 3% fest, wenn der Kaufpreis der Immobilie 4 Millionen Yen übersteigt. Die Forderung der Maklerprovision begründet sich im Zustandekommen des Vertrages. Kommt der Vertrag zustande, ist es nach Gutdünken des Maklersunabhängig von dem Grad der Aufwendungen (des Maklers)-möglich, die Gesamtsumme über 3% zu fordern. Aber im Falle von Vermittlung durch Dritte oder durch Firmenangehörige wird ein Preisnachlass gewährt. Die Aufteilung der Provision wird oftmals nach der Grösse der beteiligten Maklerbüros entschieden.
Aber in der Praxis erfolgt die Berechnung der Provision in Abhängigkeit verschiedener Faktoren wie zB. Grösse, Lage und Art der Immobilie sowie des Makler büros usw.

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In the making of housing policy, recently private tenancies have been given greater attantion. But there is still room for legal improvements.
(1)Residential tenancies have some features which are quite different from acquiring freehold. (1) To each party of a tenancy, the property management and/or maintenance after executing an agreement is more important. (2) There is a different type of market for residential tenancies, and a large number of the transactions are restricted to a certain locality, and the commission of the Estate Agent in each case is small. (3) The legal and governmental regulations on tenancy transactions are quite different.
(2)I'd like to focus on two points. One is that brokerage commission is in most cases paid only by the tenant, while according to the spirit of the law it ought to be paid by both landlord and tenant. According to the current law, a brokerage commission for residential tenancy is up to the equivalent of one month's rent. Neither party is liable to pay more than a half of this amount unless that party agrees to do so. But recently, because of the housing shortage, it has become usual for the tenant to agree to pay the whole amount. This is not the way that the law intended to be.
(3)The other point is that recently the Estate Agents have increasingly taken on the job of management and/or maintenance. The job of brokerage ought to be distinguished from that of management, but in many cases landlords have come to consider that the management fee should come out of the brokerage commission. Estate Agents do not see it like this. This misunderstanding has often caused confusion. In order to remedy this situation in March 1994, model agreement forms on brokerage, and property management and/or maintenance, were made public by the Ministry of Construction.

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This paper analyzes the Diet's and political parties' control of the actual budgetary process and suggests how the Diet and political parties should realize the real democratic control of finance in Japan's political processes. The following findings are presented. One is under the conservative one party dominant system, ruling party's control of finance had a bias view towards the clientelism as meditator of special interests, whereas the government's draft budget bill was amended in the Diet under pressure from opposition parties, which reflected the interests of minorities and the weak although filibuster by opposition parties caused the decline of the deliberative function of Committee on Budget. The other is that the ruling coalition parties' control of finance doesn't change under the Coalition Government by the demise of the 1955 Party System. In the Hosokawa Administration the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) had the initiative in budgetary process, whereas in the Murayama Administration Zoku-giin's return to power increased distributive expenditure and resisted the reduction in the vested interests. The author suggests the strengthening of the Prime Minister's power to set priority of policies, who is ruling party leader and also chief of the administrative branch, by shifting the Budget Bureau of MOF to Cabinet Secretariat in order to mutually complement unbalanced budget in distributive politics by the politicians and shortage of responsiveness in budget-making by bureaucrats. On the other hand, opposition parties assisted by the Diet's budgetary staff have to make the alternative to the draft budget by the ruling government and compete in the superiority. It concludes that the choice of both drafts by the people will contribute largely to the democratic control of the governmental finance.

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Since our Consumption Tax (CT) Law took effect in 1989, six years have already passed. I am going to review the current state of CT execution, and point out some results and legal issues. I will exemplify some of the realities of Japanese CT through such reviews.
From the annual statistical tax reports edited by the National Tax Administrative Agency (Kokuzei-cho), we can learn some interesting facts about CT execution, such as the third biggest source of tax revenue from a fiscal device levied at 3 percent; sharp increase in tax delinquency; the small proportion of administrative tax claims for relief and tax suits compared with tax complaints in the CT, and so on.
We have relatively few judicial cases on CT. In all these cases, taxpayers/consumers were lost. In some cases, consumers sued sellers who passed on the full burden of tax to the consumers while themselves receiving special CT dispensations. This is a significant feature of CT suits as compared to other tax suits.
As for specific problems concerning CT, I will refer to its regressiveness, benefits taxpayers receive from special treatments, and refusal by the tax agency to recognize CT credits equivalent to all the CT paid in preprocess.
Finally, I wil stress that people must know the real nature and practical issues of CT despite their positions either for or against it, and discuss how to deal with CT in the future.

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There are some arguments, such as juridification theory, that legal intervention into society in indirect and procedural ways is more appropriate than in direct and substantive ones. In this report, I'd like to research the movements against industrial waste disposal facilities to testify these arguments. We can find out the complexed development of "substantive orientation" and "process orientation" in these movements.

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1. Introduction
2. "The Inner Order of Social Association" as a Real or Ontological Concept of Order-Coercion and Spontaneous Order-
3. "The Inner Order of Social Association" as an Object of Practical Jurisprudence-The Question of Fact and the Morphology of Society-
4. The Structure of "the Facts of Law"
5. Concluding Remarks

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The boundary of legal system is reproduced in the sequence of communication, which distinguish legal discourses (system element) from non-legal ones (environment), making reference to a binary code (legal/illegal) in every particular context. The legal system, therefore, is required to function as a unity, though in fact it is constituted of multipul definitions of the boundary. The conditions required to make this possible are that:
(1) The legal system realize its operational closure, according to formal universality of legal code.
(2) Plural self-observations be differentiated within the legal system, each of which being set in the inter-referential relations with the others.
(3) Self-observation of the 'second order' be institutionalized, while it be ready to open the window for contingency.
The legal system can maintain its boundary only by improving its sensitivity to various observing points which are set inside and outside of itself.

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This paper aims to identify the functions and the characteristics of environmental disputes mediation in Japan in comparison with that in USA. Major findings can be summarized as follows; Japanese mediation by KOGAI-TO CHOSEI IINKAI (Environmental Disputes Coordination Commission) has achieved a realization of fast and cheep procedure, sometimes offers the only negotiation place to the citizens, and the results of the mediation usually sustain the status quo around the problem. Compared with mediation in USA which is characterized as an important part of administrative decision-making process, Japanese mediation seldom plays such a roll, and even when Japanese mediation influences the administrative decision, that seems to be done in more ad hoc way than in USA.

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People's evaluation of law and morality, particularly the legal influence on helping behavior was the focus of this research. In the author's model, published in 1992, five different types of helping behavior were determined by the combination of three latent factors: evaluation of morality, evaluation of legal purpose, and evaluation of sanction. These five types were categorized as "compliant behavior with private acceptance", "compliant behavior without private acceptance", "psychological reactance", "anti-legal behavior", and "non-social behavior".
A mailing survey of 1000 registered voters was conducted in San Francisco from July to September in 1994 (response rate was 35.8%) to examine this model. The data was analyzed with LISREL and ordered probit methods. Three hypotheses were verified: (a) Helping behavior has several different genotypes, which are determined by the combinations of the three latent factors. (b) A perception of law is composed of evaluation of legal purpose and sanction. (c) Evaluation of morality and sanction are strongly correlated.
According to these results, sanction can be the main function of law with which people have substantial concern in their daily lives. Further research is now being conducted in Japan for a comparative study.

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In Japan, the frequent use of word "Sei-i" is observed in the process of negotiations and dispute resolutions. The essential core of "Sei-i" originated in the Japanese confucianism of the Tokugawa period. Since then, it has been gradually transformed into a complex of traditional, modern and contemporary types of "Sei-i". Therefore, Japanese "Sei-i" has various meanings today.
Careful observation indicates that sometimes a sence of "Sei-i" gives normative influence on human relations, though it often plays only an emotional role. In that case, the word "Sei-i" is used to express a normative sense which people have in mind, especially when the injured party negotiates with the injurer for apology and compensation. And it is worth notice that both persons think highly of "Sei-i", but they often understand the same contents of it quite differently.
A few scholars have already studied some aspects of "Sei-i", but they don't focus their concerns upon its normative sense. This paper deals with its normative sense in the process of negotiations and disputes between the injured party and the injurer.
The main purpose of this paper is to construct theoretical model of normative contents and social functions of "Sei-i". Normative contents of "Sei-i" are classified into procedural contents and substantive ones, and both contents are constructed as a set of normative rules.
This paper is the first step to the heuristic study of "Sei-i" as a sense of social norm.

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Nel regno d'Italia, esistono sotto il sistema del diritto ufficiale di famiglia "i diritti dei privati": la cultura giuridica cattolica, i codici morali popolari delle comunità locali e l'intervento congiuntivo dei giuristi configurano un pluralismo normativo.

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The "House" (ie) in the Japanese Civil Code and the Family Registration Law was abolished as a legal instituion in 1947. This was carried out under the strong initiative of the Government Section of the occupation's General Headquarters, and yet the voluntary action toward abolition by the Japanese side (despite the reactionaries) also played an essential role.
A close look at the reformed Family Registration Law, however, reveals that certain functions and characteristics of the House were retained. One was the obligatory submission of personal data upon registration (for the purpose of compilation of statistics). This was not only preserved, but even strengthened by a directive of the Public Health and Welfare Section of the General Headquarters, which easily found support from some Japanese ministries who would also profit from such statistics. Another was the free public access to the Family Registration booklets, which was fully preserved by the Japanese parliament, despite the initial opposition of the General Headquarters.

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Prof. Kawashima assumed strength of the patriarchal powers to be a standard and made Japanese villages two patterns (householder [=Ie]'s authority-diffused-pattern and householder [=Ie]'s authority-concentrated-pattern). He recognized the variety of the social structures of Japanese villages by this pattern theory (1954). When he had taken the "village community" theory in "Über Prinzip der "formale Gleichheit" in der "germanischen Gemeinde (1968)" later, he had the different viewpoint from the social structure theory. The problem of this paper is to view a new "community theory" clarifying the point of contact with the social structure theory and the community theory of the village.

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