Authority without Power

This interpretive study of the role of law in contemporary Japan argues that the weakness of legal controls throughout Japanese history has assured the development and strength of informal community controls based on custom and consensus to maintain order - an order characterized by remarkable stability with an equally significant degree of autonomy for individuals, communities and businesses. The author examines Japan's legal evolution, beginning with the influence of Chinese legal models through the development of feudal institutions and the introduction of 19th century Western law. He describes the potential threat that Western models of law enforcement posed to Japan's social order in the late 1920s and 1930s, their containment through the discovery and adaptation of "traditional" patterns of control, and the contribution of legal reforms under the Allied Occupation. The text concludes by showing how Japan's weak legal system has reinforced pre-existing patterns of extralegal social control, thus explaining many of the fundamental paradoxes of political and social life in contemporary Japan.