Creating Textbooks to teach Japanese Law through the Japanese Language in Transitional Countries
- Project term
- 2018.04 ～ 2021.03
This project is granted by Toshiba International Foundation.
The project aims at creating introductory textbooks in Japanese for Japanese legal education, implemented in the developing or transitional countries. There is a notion that the Japanese experience which created its unique model of development by additionally incorporating Western legal concepts, may contribute meaningfully to the development and transition process of other countries.
When it comes to teaching law, one may observe that legal terminology is a very specific dilemma which poses challenges to the conceptualization of a particular legal system. In other words, it would be problematic to teach Japanese law in English, as long as certain legal concepts and terminology existing in the Japanese legal system can fully be taught only in Japanese language. Nagoya University has been implementing such Japanese legal education at the Research and Education Centers for Japanese Law (CJL) established within its partner universities abroad.
This project aims at creating the introductory textbooks for students of the CJL to enable them to learn quickly and effectively the Japanese legal system in Japanese language. Such books will also integrate elements of comparative studies. The contents of the textbooks will cover (1) Japanese History, Politics, Society, and (2) Japanese Legal System. In general, CJL adheres to the idea that international students studying Japanese law would not practice Japanese laws in the future, but carry out legal activities in own language by utilizing the knowledge obtained from Japanese law studies. In other words, one of the main objectives is not just to create intensive courses for merely studying Japanese legal system itself, but to develop skills which would help students to understand own laws in a comparative perspective with Japanese laws. Eventually, it is expected that graduates of the CJL will rely on a comparative legal approach in their future work.
In the fiscal year of 2018, we have examined the following points; (1) Program feedbacks of foreign students and their career analysis (2) Surveys on legal systems and legal education in each country (3) Interviews with local instructors (4) Preferred disciplines of legal education from the perspectives of foreign students. These activities enabled us to understand and conceptualize the CJL’s education approaches, including difficulties related to the legal terms, grammar, and foreign legal concepts. Eventually, these activities pointed to the necessity to create a handbook that would provide a systematic overview of the Japanese law, but not just general Japanese peculiarities.
The present project covers those countries which experienced socialism or authoritarian rule in the past, and are now in the process of transition to a market economy. Often, modern legal concepts are widely unknown for the legal scholarship in these countries. Taking into consideration these facts, and in order to create teaching materials with adequate contents, our experts held six meetings devoted to the development of such textbooks. Eventually, this expert group has created the contents for the two textbooks ‘Japanese History, Politics and Society’, and ‘Japanese Legal System’. Up to date, experts have completed the first draft of the textbook on ‘Japanese History, Politics and Society’. In 2019, experts are planning to continue the work on textbooks. Simultaneously, experts are also planning to create essential vocabulary lists and helpful drills.