From Conflict To Convergence: Tradition And Modernity In The Japanese Legal System Modernization

Legal System Reform in Japan from the Meiji Restoration, which lastednearly a century. Although the process is tortuous and difficult, butultimately the achievements are worthy of recognition. Around the1970s,Japan has been basically achieve modernization reforms of the legal system,and gradually began to self-improvement of the modern legal system. Inthe past, it has been ignored by the Japanese people as a social realityhas begun to attract the attention of people.Whether the modern period, or after World War II, people have alwaysbeen to maintain such an understanding: with the legal system of Western,Japanese traditional legal culture will be completely replaced andeventually lost it. Since the late1960s, the idea of the Sociology ofLaw in Japanese scholars increasingly popular, more and more scholarsbegan to focus on the social reality, and recognize the Japanese legalstatus after the reform. They eventually found, the fact that thesituation is far different from the idea of people. After the reform inJapan, the legal system has a similar appearance to the Western one, butunder this appearance was wrapped the ancient legal culture. Traditional factors was not buried in the loess because of the reform of the system,they are alive exists in every corner of social life. As a result, theuniversality and particularity in the process of the development of thelegal system also begun to attract people’s attention.As the same type of modern countries, China and Japan has very similarcharacteristics in the Legal System Reform process. First of all, thenatural process passivity. China and Japan were forced to the road toreform of the legal system under the forceful threat of Western countries.Secondly, same as Oriental nation-state, the homogeneity of thecharacteristics traditional culture of the two countries is also veryprominent. Today, the achievement in modernization of Japan legal systemis far superior to the Chinese. The root causes of this reality differences,in addition to the different history of the development process, but alsohas the spirit one. However, these differences do not mean that theachievements in the development of Japanese law are no enlightenment onChina’s current Legal System Reform. Under the framework of modernism,the traditional factors also should be part of the reservation. In today’sworld of respect of diversity, represented by Sino-Japanese Orientallegal system modernization theory also should be a common understandingand respect.