Scholars (for example, Chalmers Johnson) routinely argue that university cliques dominate Japanese firms and bureaucracies. The graduates of the most selective schools, they explain, control and manipulate their employers. They cause them to hire from their alma mater. They skew internal career dynamics to favor themselves.
For most firms and bureaucracies, we lack the data on [...]
The first Supreme Court appointed under Japan’s present Constitution took office in August 1947. This was during an early stage of the country’s occupation by Allied military forces, just two years from the end of the Great War. The Court was appointed a few months after Japan adopted a revolutionary Constitution that transferred sovereignty from [...]
The theme of this symposium issue is “Decision Making on the Japanese Supreme Court.” From that title, readers understandably might assume the focus is squarely on decisions in judicial cases. Yet, as Lawrence Repeta observes in his Article for this issue, the Japanese Supreme Court bears responsibility for another major category of decision making: judicial [...]
On September 11, 2010, I received an e-mail from a graduate of my seminar. He passed the entrance examination to the Shiho Kensyujo (Legal Training and Research Institute, or LTRI). The Ministry of Justice (Homusho) had announced the results two days prior. He and I are both graduates of Meiji University. Because of Professor Ramseyer’s [...]
The Japanese Election Law fixes the size of the House of Representatives (Lower House) at 480 members, with the further requirement that 300 of its members shall be elected through single-member constituencies, and the remaining 180 seats shall be filled through multidistrict elections on the basis of proportional representation. For the single-constituency elections, the population [...]
