ABSTRACT
The Japanese legal system is based on the civil law system and also bears the marks of influences from American law (Oda, 1992, preface). However, as Professor Oda points out, comparativists are yet to agree on the position of Japanese law within the world’s legal system. He emphasizes that contrary to the views of leading comparativists, it is inaccurate and meaningless to put Japanese and Chinese law in the same category on any basis except geographical. Unlike China, Japan did not turn to socialism in 1949 and its legal system cannot be regarded as part of the socialist legal family. Indeed, despite introducing some legal institutions from China, the Chinese influence on Japanese law is minimal. Indubitably, Japanese law has been influenced by various foreign legal systems, mainly Romano-Germanic and latterly American, which was the consequence of the outcome of the Second World War. Foreign law was received into Japan in three stages. The first stage was in the seventh to eighth century when Japan imported the Chinese political and legal system. Nevertheless, the legacy of China is minimal in contemporary Japanese law. The second stage took place between the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the mid nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century when the country completed its industrialization (Oda, 1992, p. 7). The third stage began after the Second World War and continued during the period of the Allied occupation when some laws were amended or even replaced by laws based on American law. However, Oda observed that there was a strong civil law influence even in the late twentieth century (Oda, 1992, p. 8) although Japanese lawyers still have a perception that they are working within a predominantly Westernized system of law. Japan might therefore arguably be characterized as a hybrid jurisdiction.
