Reframing the Japanese legal system in comparative legal scholarship: recognising the role and function of socio-cultural regulatory norms through legal culture and critical legal pluralism.

In traditional comparative legal studies, Japan has always been considered peculiar or sui generic. Few comparative studies go beyond a doctrinal appraisal of the Japanese legal system and as such this has led to an injurious assumption that Japan is different and strange. This thesis queries this assumption by critically examining the traditional tools of comparative law that create this misreading of Japan, namely taxonomies of legal systems, to demonstrate their underlying Anglo-European biases and ensuing limitations. This thesis then develops a critical comparative approach to the study of the Japanese legal system, underpinned by critical legal pluralism and legal culture, in order to identify and examine the multitude of socio-cultural norms that regulate everyday behaviour in Japan. This thesis contends that there is a tension at the heart of the Japanese legal system, created by a disconnection between its formal, Western-facing law and institutions, and its informal, ubiquitous and powerful socio-cultural norms. This tension is examined by contextualising a case study – lay participation (saiban-in seido) – in legal culture to discover and understand the complex array of interactions between formal law and informal socio-cultural norms.