Japanese Law in the Low Countries and France:
A Brief Outline of Changing Perceptions in a Changing World

Dimitri Vanoverbeke

 

Many scholars in the low countries (the Netherlands and Belgium) and France have been interested in various aspects of Japanese law. Because interest involved both scholars and practitioners, and because of close links between the two groups, there has not always been a clear division between socio-legal work and black-letter law as the colloquium organizers have suggested exists in other “worlds” of Japanese legal studies.^[1] The success of the Japanese economy in the 1960s spurred interest in Japanese law beyond the academic world, but initially, most observers had to rely on sources written in English. Gradually, however, articles and a few books were written in French and Dutch, and provided lawyers, businessmen and other people interested in Japanese law access to Japanese law in their own language. Various phases or periods can
be seen in the perception of Japanese law in France and the low countries. The themes in and approaches to Japanese law developed over time along with the social environment and political and economic demands of French and Dutch societies. I will (over)generalize by dividing the views of Japanese law in France and the low countries into several phases.

The first phase of the perception of Japanese law in France can be situated at the end of the 19th century. Publications in French on Japanese law start very early, and by the end of the 19th century, there was a vivid interest in Japanese law in France due to the activities of French legal scholars in Japan. Georges Bousquet and Gustave E. Boissonade were doubtlessly the best known. Boissonade was charged with drafting the penal and civil code. Several other legal scholars spent time in Japan and used the opportunity to report about legal developments there.^[2] After this initial interest, little more was published in French on Japanese law before the Second World War, and we have to wait until the early 1950s for new attention to Japanese law in France.

The second phase in the interest in Japanese law was motivated to a large extent by the interest in comparative law, which started in France well before the Second World War, but which did not focus on Japan until the work of René David.^[3] David asserted that the Japanese legal system fitted into the Far Eastern legal family, in which rites

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