Popular culture and the law in Japan

1. POPULAR CULTURE
AND THE LAW

2. • Explosion of law-themed television shows in Japan
• Yet this explosion of interest does not necessarily signal a warm relationship with law and
legal process
• Popular culture allows a fresh take on the enduring socio-legal problem of ‘low’ legal
consciousness in Japan.
• Theoretical context
• Alternative explanatory variable: emotion
• Methodological innovation
WHY JAPANESE LAW AND POPULAR CULTURE?

3. OBJECTIVES
• (Rationale)
• Does popular culture provide clues on how law
functions in different societies?
• What are the possibilities and pitfalls in relying
on popular culture sources for information about
legal culture?
• In particular, why might it be worth examining
popular culture in the Japanese context?
• (Method) How do we ‘read’ popular culture sources?
• (Comparison) How does the representation of law in
Japanese popular culture compare to that of (a) the
US, (b) Australia and (c) other countries?

4. WARMING UP
• How is law represented in the US popular
culture?

5. RESEARCH TO DATE ….
Largely nothing!

6. CURRENT RESEARCH (LAW AND POP CULTURE)
• Ignored (focus on legal text)
• Distorts (power of mass media)
• Legal theory (anti-elite perspectives)
• Logic (ideological text)
• Audience studies

7. CURRENT RESEARCH （JAPANESE STUDIES
AND POPULAR CULTURE）
• Nature of Japanese society
• “Cool” Japan
• Folk studies
• Cultural studies (production and
consumption of mass media, power
relations, subjectivity)

8. WEAKNESSES
• It is fiction, not truth
• Sample size and selection bias
• Analytical subjectivity

9. RESPONSES
• Auditor）
• Comparison with fan sites
• Sales and ratings data

10. SIGNIFICANCE OF LAW AND POPULAR CULTURE?

11. • According to Lawrence Friedman, why is popular culture an “important source and witness”
of another society’s legal culture
• What are the limitations associated with relying on popular culture as a socio-legal
method?
RATIONALE

12. WINDOW NOT MIRROR
Cognitive Interface/
Emotional Resonance

13. PRODUCT AND AUDIENCE INTERFACE
• 共感（resonance/interface）

14. • How do you ‘read’ popular culture sources?
• Narrative analysis (qualitative method in the social sciences)
METHODOLOGY