John Mark Ramseyer (born 1954) is the
Mitsubishi professor of Japanese Legal Studies at
Harvard Law School. He is the author of over 10 books and 50 articles in scholarly journals. He is co-author of one of the leading corporations casebooks, Klein, Ramseyer & Bainbridge, ''Business Associations, Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs, and Corporations'', now in its 10th edition. In 2018 he was awarded Japan's
Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon in recognition of "his extensive contributions to the development of Japanese studies in the U.S. and the promotion of understanding toward Japanese society and culture."
In 2021, Ramseyer came under scrutiny for a preprint article released by the ''
International Review of Law and Economics
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
'' which, drawing from contracts, argued that
comfort women conscripted under Japanese imperial rule were primarily voluntary prostitutes.
Education and career
* B.A.,
Goshen College
Goshen College is a private Mennonite liberal arts college in Goshen, Indiana. It was founded in 1894 as the Elkhart Institute of Science, Industry and the Arts, and is affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. The college is accredited by the High ...
1976, History
* A.M.,
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
1978, Japanese Studies
* J.D., Harvard Law School 1982
The child of
Mennonite
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radi ...
missionary parents, Ramseyer lived in Kyushu's
Miyazaki Prefecture
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Miyazaki Prefecture has a population of 1,073,054 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 7,735 Square kilometre, km2 (2,986 sq mi). Miyazaki Prefecture borders ...
,
Japan through the age of 18 and is fluent in
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
. His father was Dr. Robert Lewis Ramseyer, an anthropology PhD who founded the Hiroshima Mennonite Church and authored ''Mission and the Peace Witness: The Gospel and Christian Discipleship and Sharing the Gospel''. After clerking for Judge
Stephen Breyer (then of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, later on the Supreme Court), Ramseyer practiced law at Chicago's
Sidley & Austin
Sidley Austin LLP is an American multinational law firm with approximately 2,000 lawyers in 20 offices worldwide. The firm's headquarters is at One South Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. The firm specializes in a variety of areas in both litigation ...
. After teaching law at
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
from 1986 to 1992, he moved first to the University Chicago School of Law and then, in 1998, to Harvard. He has also taught at several Japanese universities including the
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...
,
Hitotsubashi University
is a national university located in Tokyo, Japan. It has campuses in Kunitachi, Kodaira, and Chiyoda. One of the top 9 Designated National University in Japan, Hitotsubashi is a relatively small institution specialized solely in social science ...
, and
Tohoku University
, or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated National ...
.
Academic controversies
1923 massacre of Koreans
In 2019, a book chapter written by Ramseyer titled "Privatizing Police: Japanese Police, the Korean Massacre, and Private Security Firms" was accepted for publication in the forthcoming ''Cambridge Handbook on Privatization''. In the original draft of the chapter, Ramseyer relied on contemporary Japanese-language newspaper accounts to claim that in the aftermath of the
1923 Great Kantō earthquake ethnic Koreans "torched buildings, planted bombs, poisoned water supplies, murdered, pillaged and raped." Ramseyer argued that "young Koreans were a high crime group in Japan," and suggested that the massacre of Koreans at the hands of Japanese police in the chaos that followed the earthquake may have been partially justified. When scholars disputed the accuracy of these claims, the Handbook's co-editor Alon Harel asserted that the chapter would be significantly revised prior to publication, calling the disputed content "an innocent and very regrettable mistake on our part," and adding, "We assumed that Professor Ramseyer knows the history better than us. In the meantime, we have learnt a lot about the events and we sent a list of detailed comments on the paper that were written by professional historians and lawyers."
Harel also said, "I genuinely regret that a misguided description of the history can be found now in the
SSRN
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others. Elsevier bought SSRN from S ...
(and that we are associated with it), but I assure you that the mistake will not be repeated in the forthcoming volume."
Burakumin
In 2019, Ramseyer published an article in the ''International Review of Law and Economics'' in which he argued that
Burakumin
is a name for a low-status social group in Japan. It is a term for ethnic Japanese people with occupations considered as being associated with , such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, or tanners.
During Japan's ...
is a "fictive identity" created in 1922. This article provoked detailed rebuttals from a number of Japanese and western scholars.
Comfort women
In 2021, controversy arose when the
International Review of Law and Economics
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
published an online pre-print of an article by Ramseyer that challenged the narrative that
comfort women were coerced into sexual servitude in Japanese military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s. Ramseyer described the comfort women as prostitutes, arguing that they "chose prostitution over those alternative opportunities because they believed prostitution offered them a better outcome." The article referenced contracts as proof that some comfort women made significant amounts of money and that coercion was not always a factor. In the article, Ramseyer also argues that Korean men were responsible for recruiting comfort women, and that Japanese comfort women outnumbered Korean comfort women.
Ramseyer was accused of "serious violations of scholarly standards and methods that strike at the heart of academic integrity," which include misrepresentations of Japanese sources and inaccurate citation practices. Prominent academics challenged the veracity of Ramseyer's research, since they did not find historical evidence of the contracts he described in his article. The article was supposed to be included in the journal’s March 2021 release, but the release was suspended so that it could include a number of responses to his article as the journal issued an “expression of concern” and said the article was under investigation. As of October 2022, no further articles by Ramseyer have been published in the ''International Review of Law and Economics,'' although the original online preprint of Ramseyer's article, according to the journal's policies, "will remain globally available free to read whether the journal accepts or rejects the manuscript."
In February, Ramseyer's Harvard colleagues in History and East Asian Studies Professors
Andrew Gordon and
Carter Eckert submitted a statement critical of Ramseyer's article to the International Review of Law and Economics asking that the journal delay formal publication until it had been approved by further expert peer review. Shortly after, activist and comfort woman survivor
Lee Yong-soo met with Harvard students via Zoom to tell her story, recognize the disputed nature of Ramseyer's description of comfort women as "prostitutes," and call for a formal apology from Japan and from Ramseyer. Harvard Law School Professor
Jeannie Suk Gersen then published an article in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', translated into Korean and Japanese in March, describing the effects of Ramseyer's "dubious scholarship" on Japan-South Korea relations and scholars' reactions. The ''Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus'' published a special issue on comfort women including four essays focusing on the issues surrounding the Ramseyer article, citing Ramseyer's "serious violations of scholarly standards and methods that strike at the heart of academic integrity."
The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard issued a statement on March 15th which questioned whether Ramseyer's article met Harvard's standards of scholarly integrity. Over a thousand economists signed a letter stating that the article misconstrued game theory and economics to give "cover to legitimize horrific atrocities," and that the "article goes well beyond mere academic failure or malpractice in its breach of academic standards, integrity, and ethics." Economists and
Nobel laureates Alvin Roth and
Paul Milgrom
Paul Robert Milgrom (born April 20, 1948) is an American economist. He is the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, a position he has held ...
wrote that the article "reminded
hem
A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the g ...
of
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...
."
Several academic historians of Japan, writing in a peer-reviewed journal, ''The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus'', checked Ramseyer's sources and found that "he cites, as supporting evidence, historical scholarship which argues the opposite of his claims," and argued that the paper should be retracted on grounds of
academic misconduct
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...
. In light of these critiques, the ''International Review of Law and Economics'' issued an "Expression of Concern" regarding the validity of Ramseyer's piece, and postponed publication of the print version of the issue in question until such time as scholarly replies to Ramseyer's piece could be gathered and added to the issue for context.
In January 2022, Ramseyer published a response to criticisms of his original article, titled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War: A Response to My Critics”.
Selected publications
*J. Mark Ramseyer, ''Second-Best Justice: The Virtues of Japanese Private Law'' (2015)
*Yoshiro Miwa & J. Mark Ramseyer, ''The Fable of the Keiretsu: Urban Legends of the Japanese Economy'' (Univ. of Chi. Press 2006)
*J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, ''Measuring Judicial Independence: The Political Economy of Judging in Japan'' (Univ. of Chi. Press 2003)
*''Japanese Law: Readings in the Political Economy of Japanese Law'' (J. Mark Ramseyer ed., forthcoming, Routledge Revivals 2021)
*J. Mark Ramseyer, Book Review, Japanese Stud. (Oct. 23, 2020) (reviewing R.W. Kostal, Laying Down the Law: The American Legal Revolutions in Occupied Germany and Japan (2019))
*J. Mark Ramseyer, ''Social Capital and the Problem of Opportunistic Leadership: The Example of Koreans in Japan'' (John M. Olin Ctr. for L. Econ. & Bus. Discussion Paper No. 1043, Oct. 2, 2020)
*J. Mark Ramseyer, ''Contracting for Compassion in Japanese Buddhism'' (Harv. John M. Olin Ctr. Discussion Paper No. 1039, Sept. 10, 2020)
*J. Mark Ramseyer &
Eric Rasmusen, ''Suing over Ostracism in Japan: The Informational Logic''
"Suing over Ostracism in Japan: The Informational Logic"
/ref> (Aug. 29, 2020)
Publications related to comfort women
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References
External links
* Harvard Law School
J. Mark Ramseyer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramseyer, J. Mark
Harvard Law School alumni
Harvard Law School faculty
Goshen College alumni
University of Michigan alumni
Historical negationism
Living people
1950s births