was a Japanese jurist. He was a prominent representative of post-war
liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...
in Japan and the country's leading
legal sociologist.
Serving as
Sakae Wagatsuma Sakae may refer to:
Places in Japan
* Sakae, Chiba (Japanese: 栄町; ''sakae-machi''), a town in Chiba Prefecture
* Sakae, Niigata (Japanese: 栄町; ''sakae-machi''), a town in Niigata Prefecture
* Sakae, Nagano (Japanese: 栄村; ''sakae-mura'') ...
's assistant after 1932, Kawashima was appointed professor of civil law at the
University of Tokyo in 1934. In his writings, he sought to develop a system of modern, Western, capitalist society based on the principle of the exchange of goods, which he contrasted to Japanese society with its remaining pre-modern and feudalist elements.
His criticism of Japanese domestic ideology in (1954) was a popular success. As a collaborator on the post-war reform of Japanese family law, Kawashima was unable to realize his ambitious ideas, but served as a counterweight to conservatives including
Eiichi Makino.
In his 1963 article "Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan", he argued that although litigation is not a preferred method of dispute resolution anywhere, the Japanese have a particular cultural aversion to litigation. The article has sparked heated debate, generating various perspectives, notably John Haley's "The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant" and Mark Ramseyer's "Reluctant Litigant Revisited".
References
*
1909 births
1992 deaths
Academic staff of the University of Tokyo
Japanese jurists
{{Japan-law-bio-stub