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LAW IN JAPAN: A Turning Point Edited by Daniel H. Foote. Seattle and London (UK): University of Washington Press, 2007. xxxix, 667 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-295-98731-6.
In 1961, a historic conference was held at Harvard Law School, to which 12 Japanese scholars were invited. The conference was devoted to addressing the major legal issues of Japan. The papers presented were later published as "Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society," edited by Professor Arthur Taylor von Mehren, in 1963. The book turned out to be the classic text for Japanese legal studies and provided the basis for Japanese legal studies by the later generation of scholars. Some forty years later, another historic conference took place in Seattle, Washington, under the auspices of the Asian Law Center of the University of Washington, School of Law, in 2002. The conference hosted 17 leading Japanese scholars and also 17 nonJapanese scholars interested in Japanese legal studies. The papers presented were included in this book, entitled Law in Japan: A Turning Point, edited by Professor Daniel H. Foote, of the Tokyo University Faculty of Law.
The book is chiefly designed to offer an explanation for changes that have occurred since Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society-was published, in 1963. At that point, Japan had achieved major legal reforms under the occupation. The Japanese...