Kawashima, Takeyoshi (1909–1992)

Takeyoshi Kawashima was a Japanese professor of civil law and sociology of law at Tokyo University Faculty of Law (TUFL) until his retirement at 60 years of age. He then continued working as a practicing lawyer. Kawashima began his scholarly work in search of an objective theory of law, suspecting that so-called theory in traditional interpretative jurisprudence was not genuine theory because value judgments colored it. He advanced his efforts by studying traditional customary practices among ordinary people in Japan and in China as well as theoretical suggestions in the writings of Rudolf Jhering (1818–1892), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Eugen Ehrlich (1862–1922), and other European writers.

The result was the landmark book Shoyūkenhōno riron (1949, The Theory of Ownership Law), in which Kawashima pointed to three basic elements of modern law (legal personality, private ownership, and contract) that are grounded in the social relationships specific to modern society. Kawashima's 1944 essay, containing the core ideas of this book and some of its findings, accelerated a new movement in Japanese law and society scholarship, which led Kawashima, together with a group of like-minded scholars, to organize the Japanese Association of the Sociology of Law (JASL) in 1947. The JASL, established just two years after Japan's defeat in World War II, predated the creation of similar organizations in other countries. Kawashima joined the first Board of Directors and from 1970 to 1974 served as chair.

Kawashima became a leader in law and society, not only by writing many books in Japanese but also by serving as an advisor to the government on the postwar reformation of the legal system. He also organized joint survey teams to prepare for new reformist legislation on such topics as the traditional inheritance practices of agricultural families and tenure practices in traditional common lands of village communities.

His small 1967 book,Nihonjin no hōishiki (The Japanese Consciousness of Law), may be his most famous. This study concluded that Japanese legal consciousness is “ambiguous and pre-modern” rather than modern. Unlike Michitaka Kaino (1908–1975), a leading scholar who worked to defend people's human rights against unlawful violence, Kawashima was well known to foreign scholars. He made several visits to the United States and other countries in the difficult years during and after the postwar Japanese occupation. He served as an original member of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on the Sociology of Law and interacted with foreign, mainly American, scholars.

Kawashima's achievements resulted from his social circumstances and his personal traits. His professional life spanned the period during which Japan's legal system transformed from authoritarian to democratic. His appointment at TUFL brought him some privileges and support from the government to promote Japan's postwar modernization efforts. Further, Kawashima was a typical modernist lawyer who sharply criticized premodern legal institutions and practices in Japan, leaving to his Japanese successors the task of initiating through their own efforts a search for another world of law with cultural and global perspectives.