Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the normative environment of the Tokyo railway network focusing in particular on non-verbal norms, and evaluates the relation between formal and informal law.

Paper long abstract:

Mainstream legal scholarship is based on the assumption that law needs to be verbalized and written down in formal documents. Non-verbal norms are often ignored, or dismissed as social customs, good manners and the like. This misunderstanding affects profoundly the analysis of Japanese law and its role in Japanese society. Language is in fact just one of the tools used to regulate human behavior. Most people live immersed in, and routinely follow, non-verbalized norms.

Norms take many forms in modern urban settings. They appear in posters, where text may be written in various shapes and colors, marking an important departure from the drab typefaces used in official gazettes. Text is usually accompanied by images, likely as relevant as the text, if not more. Norms can be expressed through drawings or symbols alone.

Besides posters and signs, human behavior can be regulated through nudges, artifacts, architectural elements or other de facto norms, that have effects absolutely comparable to those of verbalized or pictorial norms.

Japan, and in particular its large and densely populated cities, are especially rich in semi- or non-verbalized visual norms. Obvious examples are road signs, prohibitions of all kinds (eating and drinking, skateboarding, smoking to name a few) or the recent and ubiquitous posters related to coronavirus infection prevention. The absence of litter bins in stations is a de facto norm.

This paper adopts this theoretical framework to analyze the visual and de facto norms found in train stations and trains in the Tokyo area (JR, Toei Subway, Tokyo Metro).

The goal of this paper is to show the interaction between official verbalized law, semi-verbalized law such as that of posters and signs, and de facto law, and to expound how all these elements contribute to controlling the everyday behavior of millions of people in Japan.