Comparative Law and Multicultural Classes: A Japanese Example

In this chapter, “multicultural class” is defined as “a law class consisting of students with multicultural backgrounds”. Applying this definition, I will report on one facet of the current teaching environment of comparative law in Japan, referring to the concrete example of Hitotsubashi University. Looking back at the history of modern Japanese law, we can see that Chinese, English, French, German, and American elements, besides indigenous Japanese ones, have all melted together. Japanese law is a complicated “amalgam” of Western legal cultures, including both civil law and common law cultures, and East Asian legal cultures. When we observe Japanese legal education in relation to multicultural classes, the undergraduate programmes would be the most important from a qualitative perspective. Multicultural law classes in Japan tend to consist of students from Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea. In multicultural classes of comparative law in Japan, East Asian students often notice that their laws cannot be classified properly by Western theories—even the latest ones—and come to realize their own “subjectivity” as well as the “relativity” of the concept of legal family. Education in multicultural classes can be regarded more as an “opportunity” than a “challenge” for comparative law.