This paper aims to look at international legal assistance programs in Japan. Although the Japanese experience may not have received much attention in the global debate on law and development, an anthropological approach would open new questions about the transnational circulation of legal concepts.
Japanese legal technical assistance (“hoseibishien”), which officially started in 1996, is supposed to “utilize the experience” by supporting Asian countries more than a hundred years after the reception of European law at the beginning of the Meiji era. According to the official discourse made by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), they pay more attention to the recipients’ needs when compared with other donors. How much does this self-representation, based on East-West dichotomy and so-called “Asian values”, reflect the actual practice? And to what extent does it make Japanese projects different from others?
By examining the trajectory of Japanese international legal assistance programs and how different actors involved make sense of their activities in various settings, I hope to go beyond the evaluation of each project as such and to elucidate how legal professionals deal with plurality while aiming for the rule of “law” at the same time.
