Pursuing our goal of analyzing some aspects of advanced societies integrated not by the similarities but by the differences, we reached to a certain new world of sociology of law which should be developed for understanding the current societies undergoing structural changes, as individuals whose activities are grouped into different institutions specializing in their respective functions. Individuals relate to one another on the basis of the complementary differences mutually inter-dependent on one another. We may, therefore understand the importance of pre-law emotions bonding people into communities.
We will use 'solidarity' as the term symbolizing solid functions of integrating or grouping individuals into different institutions compared with the term 'communal' or 'communality' symbolizing the image of the dubious and elusive ideals by the scientists of sociology of law who hope to expand the ideals which create private and voluntary mutual help among people.
The nature of modern law can be seen most clearly when contrasted with the process of social ordering in traditional Japanese society. One unitary and superior social entity was believed to replace the pre-modern village or tribe in social control. These Weberian concept of modern law thinking often argues that the rest of the world would repeat the western experience of simultaneous legal and socio-economic development. The question is how to allow development to happen without falling into the trap of a mere laissez faire liberalism. Law's function is to discover through dialogue the potentialities of law as a resource to deal with shared grievances.
Laws seem to be undergoing a process of both destructing and restructuring in our developed societies in which multiple potentialities of our human communality are well developed and balanced as open communality as opposed to the closed communality found in Japan. In Japan minorities are required to tolerate the intolerance of majority of people. This requirement is enforced not only by informal community pressure, but also by governmental authorities, judiciary, employers, and all other conceivable agents of social control. Therefore critical legal studies are cited to stress the hegemonic power of legal rights and formal judicial systems to limit the way people can deal with their problems and fully express their own perspectives. Postmodernism is cited to argue that grand narratives or theories lost their effectivism. In the transformation of society and the activist lawyers who impose their own grand narratives on their clients are exerting their hegemonic power like that of legal rights and formal judicial system. Communalism is cited to argue for the need of basing our legal system on people's natural sense of morality.
The idea of community rejected in the literature of sociology of law is usually that of a comprehensive, all embracing or very extensive system of shared values. To consider conditions under which community could be a basis of modern law, it is necessary to specify more clearly what kind of community is being sought.
The purpose of our projects is to analyze the transformation of Japanese society of today and to set up new sociology of law which should be formulated through the discussion among the scholars of this association. Viewed from the perspective of a sociology of law, increasing state intervention in both welfare and economic affairs, and the consequent erosion of the liberal separation between state and civil society, gradually undermine the relative generality and the autonomy that distinguish the legal order, and what is follow this is to make it impossible to maintain an objective and justified solution. The solution of law, which seemed to contain the problem of the unjustified exercise of the power, is no longer seen as doing so. Where we do go from here and what are the possibilities of any alternative conception?.

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If we make a experiential model of right assertion today, it would be more important to analyse the supports of it than itself. I will explain collaborativeness of disputes and "the self-supports of right assertion".

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As a part of the concluding effort of the three years' discussion on the Changing Era in terms of social communality in Japan, this paper tries to remind that any formation of communality could be detrimental to marginal members. The sociology of law should work to bring forward those "marginal/minority voices" into academic attenition.

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We feel it uncomfortable to regard debt collection suits brought by consumer loan companies as "typical" right claims. It is because such litigation contradicts our image of ideal "communal" relationship in which each participant cares what others have at heart.

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(1) Politics on Subject/Community Relationships
(2) Law in the World of "Differenciation Politics"
(3) Need for Interpretive Approach in Sociology of Law
(4) From A Site of Medical Malpractice Dispute
(5) Conclusion

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Though the view of mediation among Japanese legal sociologists was often critical in the past, it began to be more favorable under the influence of the American ADR movement since the 1970s. However, there is little empirical research to substantiate the change. This symposium aims at an empirical and comparative investigation of the reality of mediation in Japan, to understand better the role of mediation in the contemporary social conditions.

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En France depuis une dizaine d'années des efforts importants ont été réalisés pour organiser la médiation familiale et promouvoir les médiateurs, justifiés par les transformations de la famille. Cependant, en dépit de ces efforts, le recours à la médiation familiale lors d'un divorce est encore peu développé. Pour comprendre la dissonance entre le discours et la pratique il faut resituer la médiation dans l'espace général de la régulation des conflits familiaux, analyser la structuration et la hiérarchisation de cet espace en fonction des tâches accomplies et des différentes catégories de professionnels ou d'acteurs et étudier les stratégies qui y sont développées. On peut ainsi comprendre pourquoi la médiation familiale a quelque difficulté à trouver sa place, coincée, d'une part, entre l'institution judiciaire et ses professionnels qui occupent une position dominante, d'autre part, par l'intervention sociale ou psychologique classique dont elle cherche à se distancier.
L'émergence de ce nouveau mode de résolution des litiges n'est pas sans poser de problèmes allant de la nouvelle normativité des médiateurs qui les conduit à stigmatiser ceux qui refusent de s'inscrire dans une perspective de négociation des désaccords jusqu'au risque de confusion des rôles que l'inscription de la médiation dans le cadre de la procédure judiciaire peut faire naître.

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Current, family court mediation sometimes faces difficulties in resolving disputes concerning family, of which roles, features, member's ethos and expectations have shown drastic changes since 1945. To provide more effective helps for the parties involved in a dispute, it is the time to re-consider the present scheme of family court mediation.

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This paper aims to analyze the characteristics of landlord-tenant disputes and to illustrate an aspect of civil mediation at the Tokyo District Court. It is revealed that civil mediation at the Tokyo District Court mainly concerned with the financial arrangement between parties rather than the achievement of legally valid results.

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In this report I evaluate the gaps between the ideal functions of mediation advocated by the (socio-) legal scholars and the actual situations we see in Japan, especially in the (sub) urban residential areas.

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Japan's former multiracial empire included the colonies of Taiwan and Korea which it lost after its defeat in 1945. On the other hand, the issue of how to deal with the 600, 000 or so former colonial subjects who remained in Japan became a new problem.
MacArthur's draft of the new Constitution stated that "Aliens shall be entitled to the equal protection of law", however this became "All of the people are equal under the law" in the present Constitution. "People" came to be interpreted in a narrow sense as Japanese nationality holders, and foreigners were thus placed in a weak position.
When the Peace Treaty came into effect in April 1952, former colonial subjects were unilaterally pronounced 'foreigners' without being given the opportunity to choose their nationality. An exclusive legal system centered on its own nationals was thus established.
This legal system was faced with a huge challenge with the unexpected influx of Vietnamese refugees into Japan. Furthermore, with the entry of foreign workers into Japan in the latter half of the 1980's, the multiracialism of Japanese society could no longer be avoided. The need to separate nationality from ethnicity, the history of Japan's past, and present conditions are being questioned, and the time has come to consider a legal system which reflects this condition.

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Due to its small population of 25, 000, Ainu Minority has been largely ignored as an ethnic group. But one recent court judgment has ruled that they are a native ethnic group holding a right to their ethnic culture. This paper discusses the recent legal situation of the Ainu Minority and the possibility of multi-culturalism in Japan.

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This paper discusses the legal situations of the Korean Minority in Japan, especially the increase of Koreans holding Japanese nationality, in the light of the long history of discriminative legal policy in post-war Japan, and recent legal modifications of Japanese nationality law.

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Presently, about 500000 foreign worekers have migrated into Japan. 270000 out of them are from Asian and African countries. 230000 people are from Latin American countries.
Most of the Latin American migrants are Japanese descendants. These migration occurred in the middle of the 80's. The Japanese government provided the descendants of Japanese with the residential status since the 1990 revision of the immigration law. However, the government has rejected this status for the migrant workers who are not the Japanese descendants.
Therefore, from asian and African countries, workers have entered this country with temporary status which expires within 15 to 90 days. Almost all of these people have overstayed than the allowed period.
These irregulated workers have faced with the problems concerning the social security medical treatment, the discriminative treatment in the criminal justice process, and so forth.
There have been serious problems with asylum seekers in Japan. Although Japan ratified the refugee treaty in 1981, the government's reluctuncy in admitting the refugees have been severely critisised by the NGOs.
Japan should be evolved into the country where the rights of non Japanese nationals are equally protected as those of Japanese nationals.

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Das vorliegende Kommentar im Simposium über das Thema "Die japanische Gesellschaft als die werdende multikulturelle Gesellschaft und das Recht" macht zwei folgende Bemerkungen über die Relation zwischen der multikulturellen Gesellschaft und dem Nationalstaat; (1) Wie ist es möglich, dass sich die multikulturelle Gsellschaft noch als eine Geselischaft hält? (2) Steht die Perspektive der multikulturellen Gesellschaft im Zusammenhang mit der Umwandelung des Nationalstaats zum territorial organisierten Safty-Net?

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The political language for the current debates on judicial reforms are dominated by the deregulationist-protectionist dichotomy. I argue that this dichotomy does not adequately capture the pathology of contemporary Japan: the tyranny of intermediary groups that undermines both the rights of individuals and the state's power to seek public interest. Judicial reforms should be part of the larger politico-economic reconstruction of Japan in which these groups are disciplined by rule of law as embodied in the universalistic and fair schemes of competition and human rights protection.

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The Iron Triangle, i.e., the collusive inner circle of politicians, bureaucrats, and businesses, created the structural corruption in Japan's social order. The objective of the deregulation movements is to change Japan to the rule-oriented society. Giving people more access to the law, the reform of civil justice system may play the key role in the social change.

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In Japan, starting in July 1999 an "Advisory Committee on Judicial Reform" will within two years prepare a plan for judicial reform. In this event, judicial reform from the perspective of administrative control as currently conducted by Taiwan and Korea, and reform that guarantees the independence of the judges is indispensable.

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This paper aims to show how medical professions and legal professions interact in medical malpractice litigation. Lawyers tend to depend on the expert testimony for their judgements about most medical issues but avoid to express their dependence.

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This article efforts to uncover the parent-child relationship underlying custody as a parent' s right to the child, focusing on what custody means in everyday life. When it is based on the assumed roles of Mother and Father, award of custody can be seen as legal allocation of caretaking work (and paid work) along the domestic/public border, reconfirming gender roles, though contemporary custody is claimed to be based on equality of women and men, ie., gender neutrality.

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The flow of today's judicial reform involves not only judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, but also original paralegal professions in our country, called 'Shiho-shoshi', 'Gyosei-shoshi', etc.
Although the system of 'Shiho-shoshi' has a history of 100 years or more after the Meiji era, the legal basis is ambiguous and the institutional base tends to vary due to the streamlining of register offices, computerization of registration, etc.
Under these conditions, various figures of the 21^st century's 'Shiho-shoshi' have been drawn. In this paper, an arrangement is made of historical development and current matters, an attempt is made to classify by type based on the results of a questionnaire administered in Fukushima and Kanagawa prefectures, and some opinions are proposed about what should be the legal profession and the 'Shiho-shoshi' of 21^st century.

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This is a Report of research work carried out on Shiho-Shoshi (Judicial Scrivener; a kind of quasi-lawyer of which there are no counterparts in Europe and U.S.A.) by scholars of sociology of law. This is the first and only research work ever carried out on this subject by academics and, in this sense, it is significant.
However, when considering the future image of Shiho-Shoshi in relation to "Judicial Reform", which appears to be proceeding at rapid pace, it is not sufficient to just investigate the actual conditions prevailing today. In a wide sense, the legal profession in Japan has been diversified. Apart from qualified lawyers, there are various types of quasi-lawyers; administrative scriveners, tax attorneys and so on. It is therefore necessary to consider what should be the role of the Shiho-Shoshi from the perspective of the legal profession at large. The problem should be studied from the point of what form of the legal profession would be most suitable to establish the Rule of Law in this society and provide optimum legal services to the citizens.

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According to a major view, Max Weber thought of positive relationships between modern capitalism and formally rational law as a universal proposition. Then "England Problem" rises. Weber wrote as follows: "English law-finding is not, like that of the Continent, 'application' of 'legal propositions' logically derived from statutory texts." "[T] he essential similarity of the capitalistic development on the Continent and in England has not been able to eliminate the sharp contrasts between the two types of legal systems." According to the author of this essay, the significance of his sociology of law does not lie in universal evolutionary theory, but in comparative analysis which aims at clarifying the unique characteristics of the Continent law and the English law. The current task is to test the empirical validity of his study.

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In the case of Specially Reciprocal Contract for Hire of Immovable Property, the courts in Thailand judge the effects that are not admitted in ordinary hire contract. But the hirer cannot set them up against to a third person. In the future, this problem should be settled.

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The purpose of this paper is to consider how British judges understood the idea of modern society when they acknowledged negligence as a rule in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The modern notion of negligence reflects their cognition of society that institutionally secured the reasonable trust.

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