Community and the Law: A Critical Reassessment of American Liberalism and Japanese Modernity

This important book translates seven landmark essays by one of Japan’s most respected and influential legal thinkers. While Takao Tanase concedes that law might not matter as much in Japan as it does in the United States, in a provocative challenge to socio-legal researchers and comparative lawyers, he asks: why should it? The issue, he contends, is not whether law matters to society; it is how society matters to law.

Developing a descriptive and normative theory of community and the law, th...