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This paper examines the evolution of Japan’s approach to artificial intelligence governance, tracing its development from an initial reliance on soft-law instruments toward a more structured hybrid framework.

Paper long abstract

Historically, Japan has addressed AI-related risks and opportunities primarily through self-regulation, ethical principles, and multistakeholder dialogue and coordination, rather than through comprehensive and prescriptive legislation. Notably, in pursuing its policy ambition of becoming the “world’s most AI-friendly country”, the Japanese regulatory stance has been conceived as developmental, innovation and market-friendly, emphasizing flexibility, adaptability, and attractiveness to foreign technology investors over regulation and binding constraints. This trajectory, however, has been challenged by growing public and business concerns about unregulated artificial intelligence, prompting calls for stronger and more structured rules and ultimately leading to the 2025 enactment of Japan’s first law on artificial intelligence. Accordingly, this paper examines the development of artificial intelligence governance in Japan, focusing on its gradual transition from a predominantly soft law-based approach to a more structured hybrid regulatory framework.

Situating the Japanese experience within the broader global debate on AI regulation, the work moves beyond the simplified opposition between regulation and innovation. It shows how Japan, drawing on its corporate and business culture, which traditionally values consensus-oriented decision-making, reputational incentives, and voluntary compliance, has sought to reconcile risk management, technological development, and social trust through an “Agile Governance” approach, reframing traditional state-centric regulatory paradigms and shifting toward an institutionalized, adaptive, agenda-setting supervisory role for public authorities in close coordination with private actors’ internal yet vertically oriented rule-making.

The paper focuses on recent developments, notably the 2025 Act on the Promotion of Artificial Intelligence, which, while not establishing a fully enforceable regime, represents a significant step toward institutionalizing AI governance by providing a statutory basis for coordination, information-gathering, and policy steering. It also examines the continued centrality of soft-law instruments, particularly in sectors where AI systems have legally or economically significant effects. Moreover, it will critically assesses the limits of this approach, including the selective scope of statutory intervention, the limited use of enforceable obligations, and ongoing challenges to accountability and legal certainty in a globalized AI market. Finally, the work will offers a comparative perspective on how regulatory culture and institutional design shape responses to shared challenges posed by rapidly evolving AI technologies.

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Paper short abstract

Japan’s AI Promotion Act uses a consensus-driven, innovation-first approach to regain competitiveness, contrasting with Korea’s stricter compliance model and China’s control-focused regime, reflecting divergent paths in Asia’s AI governance.

Paper long abstract

Japan’s Act on the Promotion of Research and Development and the Utilization of AI-Related Technologies embodies a distinctive regulatory philosophy grounded in consensus-building and voluntary compliance. Rather than imposing rigid obligations, the Act promotes guidelines and collaborative frameworks, reflecting Japan’s longstanding reliance on “soft law” instruments to steer technological governance. This normative approach is consistent with Japan’s broader commitment to international dialogue, as evidenced by its active role in the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, which seeks harmonization of principles across jurisdictions. At its core, the Act aims to stimulate domestic innovation and restore Japan’s competitive position in the global AI ecosystem, responding to mounting concerns that the country risks lagging behind leading technological powers and losing the AI race.

In contrast, South Korea’s AI Basic Act adopts a markedly prescriptive orientation. Anchored in a risk-based methodology, it mandates compliance for high-risk applications and generative AI systems, thereby offering greater regulatory certainty and enforceability. China, by comparison, advances a state-centric paradigm characterized by algorithmic transparency, cybersecurity imperatives, and stringent content governance. Through binding rules and pervasive oversight, the Chinese model prioritizes sovereign control and normative alignment with national security objectives.

This contribution pivots around the Japanese Act, however, it also undertakes a comparative analysis of these three regulatory trajectories, situating Japan’s flexible, consensus-driven strategy against Korea’s compliance-oriented and China’s control-focused frameworks. It interrogates the implications of these divergent models for global governance, particularly in terms of interoperability and normative convergence. We will examine the interplay between legal formality, policy objectives, and technological dynamism. This study contributes to ongoing debates on whether "soft" approaches (such as the Japanese) can effectively balance innovation incentives with societal safeguards in an era of accelerating AI development.

Keywords: Japan, China, South Korea, AI Gobernance

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This individual paper provides a comparative analysis of how EU and Japanese legal frameworks regulate copyright protection in the AI training process. It examines how both systems balance the protection of rightholders’ interests with the promotion of innovation and technological development.

Paper long abstract

Finding the right balance between protecting the interest of copyright holders and between accessing and using creative content to promote innovation is an ‘ancient old problem’ related to copyright. With the emergence of digital economy and new technologies like machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence (from now on “AI”) the discussion has developed in a new spirit, in that of promoting or not AI business. This individual paper presents and analyzes exactly how the current legal framework of the European Union and Japan regulate copyright exceptions for AI training (AI business promotion).

These two legal systems warrant comparison, because they confront the same issue through two fundamentally distinct approaches. The EU is giving copyright holders an ‘opt out’ right to text and data mining (from now on “TDM”) exceptions while trying to set a global standard of public policy with the AI Act like they did with the GDPR. In the other hand, Japan has decided to be a TDM and ML heaven for AI model providers in allowing copyright exploitations as long as they’re not considered to be done for ‘enjoyment’ purposes.

While we must wait for more court decisions that interpret the respective legal frameworks to come to practical conclusions, the outcome of the debate presented by this individual paper will affect many of today’s digital economy players like those in the journalism industry, music industry (e.g. how will music creators be fairly remunerated if their works are used in the context of AI?), game industry and so forth.

For the EU to be competitive in the digital market, it is still uncertain whether the European lawmaker needs to take a page from the JCA book and include the ‘enjoyment’ purpose in its TDM exceptions or not. Or is the tertium comparations highlighted in this individual paper between the Japanese and EU legal systems going to be settled by the judiciary interpretations of the TDM exceptions and the AI Act of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Regardless the countries' respective outcomes, the concern remains global.

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Paper short abstract

Japan will allow parents to choose joint custody after divorce by May 2026. Under the current civil code, parents must choose one of the parents to become the sole custodial parent after divorce. Although the new legislation plans to provide a safeguard, it still leaves a concern for DV survivors.

Paper long abstract

The House of Councillors, the National Diet of Japan, approved the draft of the amended civil code that would allow parents to choose joint custody after divorce. The new act will come into effect by May 2026. Under the current civil code, in general, parents exercise joint custody only during their marriage and must choose one of the parents to become the sole custodial parent after divorce. This has been criticized especially by an organization supporting a so-called left behind parent who was forced to be alienated from their children after divorce. As a consequence, in a majority of divorce cases, mothers obtain sole custody over children. The new custody law emphasizes the best interests of children and considers that it is important for both of their parents to be involved in the children's lives and fulfill their responsibilities even after divorce. This idea is commonly shared in the U.S., and the Convention on the Rights of the Child urges the best interests of the child to be considered as a primary concern. However, Japan had reasons why it had maintained the sole custody system after divorce. One of the reasons is for survivors of domestic violence (DV). In fact, opponents of the amendment have already raised concerns for them that the new legislation will make it harder for the survivors to escape from their abusive relationships. To respond to the concern, the new legislation plans to provide a safeguard. If the family court finds that there is DV or child abuse, the court must award sole custody to survivors. However, this safeguard still leaves some concerns for certain survivors of DV. My paper aims to explore how the new legislation may impact certain survivors of DV. I also explore the impact on foreign-born survivors of DV in international divorce cases with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and articulate those potential issues that Japan may face soon. To conclude, it suggests how the issues can be culturally and appropriately ameliorated within the Japanese legal framework.

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This paper analyzes Japan’s marriage equality cases as constitutional transformation shaped by European marriage alternatives and U.S. developments following Hawaiʻi’s Baehr v. Lewin, highlighting the limits of incremental reform in Japan.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines Japan’s marriage equality litigation as a site of constitutional transformation shaped by transnational legal dialogue, particularly Japanese courts’ engagement with European marriage and partnership regimes and subsequent legal developments in the United States following early litigation in Hawaiʻi. Between 2021 and 2024, Japanese district and high courts issued a series of decisions assessing the constitutionality of excluding same-sex couples from marriage under the Civil Code and the Japanese Constitution. While outcomes diverged, these decisions reveal a shared judicial effort to reconcile constitutional text with evolving social norms by drawing on comparative law and foreign experience.

Japanese courts have repeatedly referenced European jurisdictions as early innovators in recognizing same-sex relationships through civil unions, registered partnerships, and marriage equality. These European models have been cited to demonstrate shifting global understandings of family, equality, and state recognition, while also informing debates over whether incremental alternatives to marriage can satisfy constitutional equality guarantees. At the same time, courts have acknowledged legal developments in the United States that followed the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Baehr v. Lewin (1993), which catalyzed global constitutional conversations on marriage equality and influenced subsequent judicial and legislative reforms. Together, Europe’s experimentation with marriage alternatives and Hawaiʻi’s role as a constitutional catalyst form an important comparative backdrop for Japan’s contemporary litigation.

The paper argues that Japan’s reliance on local partnership and “familyship” systems—adopted in the absence of national legislative reform—mirrors earlier European approaches while raising unresolved constitutional questions about whether alternatives can substitute for marriage without entrenching inequality. By situating Japanese case law within this transnational context, the analysis highlights how courts selectively deploy comparative references to legitimize constitutional interpretation while maintaining deference to legislative discretion.

Through doctrinal analysis and socio-legal comparison, this paper positions Japan as a late but revealing participant in a global constitutional conversation on marriage equality. It demonstrates how European precedents and U.S. legal developments inform Japanese judicial reasoning, while Japan’s ongoing litigation offers insight into the limits of incremental reform and the future trajectory of constitutional change in aging, industrialized democracies.

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Paper short abstract

My paper examines the evolution of Japanese inheritance law through the reception of European legal standards and their adaptation to cultural traditions, focusing on family structure, spousal rights, ancestor-related property, and consensus-based dispute resolution.

Paper long abstract

My paper examines the evolution of Japanese inheritance law, highlighting the interplay between traditional cultural norms and the selective adoption of European legal standards. Key developments include the abolition of the patriarchal family model, the special status of spouses in inheritance, unique rules governing items related to ancestor veneration, and the Family Court’s consensus-oriented approach to dispute resolution. Together, these features demonstrate Japan’s distinctive integration of Western legal concepts into a communitarian society while maintaining cultural continuity.

Modern Japanese civil law exemplifies a mixed legal system, incorporating elements from European, Chinese, and U.S. legal traditions, carefully adapted to local social norms. Inheritance law, in particular, illustrates how codified rules and informal, consensus-driven practices coexist, reflecting the tension between legal modernization and enduring cultural practices.

The study employs historical legal texts, Family Court decisions, and comparative analysis to trace the transformation of inheritance rules and their societal impact. Beyond its domestic significance, Japan’s experience provides insights for countries navigating similar challenges in balancing traditional norms with imported legal models. In this comparative perspective, Central Asian jurisdictions, including Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, are highlighted briefly as examples where European-inspired legal reforms intersect with long-standing social customs.

By emphasizing the reception of European legal concepts within Japan, this research demonstrates broader mechanisms of legal adaptation and cultural accommodation. Its findings contribute to academic and practical discussions on law reform in culturally diverse societies, illustrating how legal systems can reconcile the preservation of cultural identity with contemporary legal and economic demands.

Ultimately, the project underscores the value of comparative approaches for cross-cultural understanding and highlights how Japanese legal experiences can inform global debates on inheritance law, while offering contextually relevant insights for regions encountering parallel challenges.

Keywords: Japanese inheritance law; European legal influences; comparative law; family law; mixed legal system; legal modernization

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Paper short abstract

This article addresses issues related to religion and law that have not been well-researched in previous studies, focusing on at least three aspects. Research on the Japanese colonial period of Korea, particularly on religion, has primarily focused on the Governor-General’s control over religions.

Paper long abstract

This article addresses issues related to religion and law that have not been well-researched in previous studies, focusing on at least three aspects. Research on the Japanese colonial period of Korea, particularly on religion, has primarily focused on the Governor-General’s control over religions. In this regard, the Ordinance on Religious Propagation (1915) and the Religious Organizations Act (1939) were already well-known representative control regulations (Taehoon Kim 2011; Michael Kim 2016; Sanjato Yoshinobu 2018). Also, the concept of “religion” in modern Korea has been well-studied (Marion Eggert 2012; Albert Park 2020; Pang Wonil 2021; Edward Baker 2021). First, it examines how Korean Christianity, with half a million believers, participated in the various discussions in mainland Japan leading up to the Religious Organizations Act and why they raised oppositional voices. Second, it demonstrates that, despite its non-application of the Act in colonial Korea, the Religious Organizations Act, contrary to conventional wisdom, catalyzed Korean elites and Christians to support control over pseudo-religions. Third, it examines how the category of “religion,” developed by Christianity in colonial Korea, survived after liberation, despite the abolition of the Ordinance on Religious Propagation and the subsequent dismantling of religious regulations under the US military government. Given Christianity's long-standing sensitivity to state interference with religion, it is ironic to examine the legacy of Christianity’s negative attitude toward other pseudo-religions—or, as Koreans call them, “national religions,” such as taejonggyo [Great Religion] and chŏndogyo [Heavenly Way Religion]. In this regard, it also seeks to examine the intellectual history of the formation of the category of modern “religion” during the colonial period.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Japan’s indemnification scheme for art works on exhibition in light of the cultural policy and industry in Japan and considers the role of the public sector vis-à-vis the private and commercial sector in the Japanese society.

Paper long abstract

Japan introduced the scheme of government indemnification for damages that art works incur during an exhibition in 2011. Apparently designed after the equivalent schemes in the US and European states, it holds a unique position within the Japanese legal system in that the government indemnifies the loss that the private sector suffers. Other schemes providing for the indemnification by the government cover damages caused by the failed launch of rockets and damages due to nuclear incidents. Similar schemes where the government serves as the insurer include the reinsurance for earthquake insurance and liability insurance for oil pollution from tankers boycotted by the commercial insurers. As compared with these, indemnification for damages to art works on exhibition seems to be smaller in scale and lesser in seriousness. Furthermore, commercial insurance for arts has developed recently, which might have made the need for government indemnification smaller. In fact, the application for the government indemnification scheme has reportedly been rather low. Against these backgrounds, this paper looks into the cultural policy of Japan behind the introduction of the scheme, considers the difference in status of museum and other art collection between Japan and Western countries and examines the role of the public sector vis-à-vis the private sector, in this case the relevance of the commercial insurance in the market, among others.

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This paper examines how Japan’s 2019 Act for the Promotion of the Ainu Culture influences the protection of indigenous intangible cultural heritage in the age of copyright and cultural commodification, analysing tensions between intellectual property law, heritage governance and indigenous autonomy.

Paper long abstract

The purpose of this text is to explore the legal and ethical tensions surrounding the protection of indigenous intangible cultural heritage in Japan, focusing on the Ainu and the practical implications of the 2019 Ainu Policy Promotion Act. On the one hand, the Act officially acknowledges the Ainu are indigenous peoples of Japan, but on the other - it is argued within academics that it rather prioritises products of their culture. In this sense, the subject of protection is a collection of promotable cultural expressions rather than a whole living system of knowledge related to language, ritual, land, and communal practice, and Ainu (a ‘human being’). It analyses the state of intellectual property protection for Ainu cultural expressions within (and around) the 2019 Ainu Act and Japanese legislation on IP. It examines the Act’s structure and provisions to later elaborate on how these mechanisms position Ainu culture within existing property regimes. The next step would be mapping accessible IP tools, such as copyright, design and trademark protection, and briefly covering supplementary areas (unfair competition, consumer protection) which are in practice available (or unavailable) for Ainu communities. Its purpose is to highlight how these tools often fail to align with collective creation, intergenerational transmission, customary norms, and the sacred or non-commercial dimensions of cultural practices. It is especially important in times of globalization and consumerism, when final products of cultural expressions, ranging from dance, music, and craft patterns, receive special attention and are promoted through tourism and state-sponsored institutions. Without sufficient legal protections or community control such practices often lead to many risks, especially when they might separate original from promoted meanings and commodify cultural expressions. Thus, this text is meant to deepen our understanding of how law can both protect and restrict indigenous cultures in modern Japan by examining Japanese indigenous policy in relation to global discussions on cultural heritage law.

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Paper short abstract

Despite the utmost importance of accuracy in court interpreting, Japan lacks an accreditation system for court interpreters. In this paper, however, I will argue that courts provide interpreters with reasonably good working conditions, which contribute to enhancing accuracy in court interpreting.

Paper long abstract

Most democratic nations, including member states of the European Union, the United States, Australia, as well as the neighboring South Korea, have long been hailed in Japan as examples of countries “doing court interpreting right.” That is because, unlike those nations, Japan still lacks an accreditation system for court interpreters. This is despite the fact that the legal setting is one where “the stakes of working in these contexts [legal and medical] are so high that interpreting mistakes can become, literally, a matter of life and death” (Ng and Creeze 2020:1). The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nihon Bengoshi Rengōkai) has consistently maintained that the establishment of such a system constitutes a necessary precondition for the protection of defendants’ linguistics and legal rights. Nevertheless, to date, these appeals have yielded no tangible results.

It is hard to argue against the notion that such systems are a potent tool for screening adequate candidates for court interpreters and for securing accuracy and quality of their work. In this paper, however, I will argue that implementing such a system is not the only way to achieve these goals. Further, I will also demonstrate that despite lacking an accreditation system for court interpreters, Japanese courts provide them with reasonably good working conditions, which in turn helps provide non-Japanese speakers in criminal court cases (be it defendants, witnesses, or victims of crimes) with quality interpreting and translation services.

By no means is that to suggest, however, that Japan should not consider implementing an accreditation system or that the quality of court interpreting in Japan is beyond reproach. The point I am raising is that Japanese courts, despite numerous challenges, deal with the provision of interpreting and translation services reasonably well.

Keywords: accreditation, accuracy, court interpreter, legal interpreting, working conditions

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Paper short abstract

This presentation first examines how issues of access, researcher roles, and positionality were addressed in pioneering ethnographic studies of the Japanese police, before turning to a contemporary example drawn from the researcher’s ongoing PhD project.

Paper long abstract

With more than 6000 kōban (neighborhood police boxes) and 6000 chūzaisho (residential police boxes) dispersed across urban and rural areas, police boxes are an iconic presence on Japanese street corners. Paradoxically, despite the omnipresence of police officers in everyday life, detailed ethnographic studies of the Japanese police remain few and far between, and there has been no coherent inquiry into the process of conducting such research.

This presentation is organized in two parts. The first examines how questions of access, researcher roles, and positionality were addressed in pioneering ethnographic studies of the Japanese police, including those conducted by Japanese scholars (e.g. Miyazawa, 1985) and foreign scholars (e.g. Bayley, 1976; Ames, 1981; Craig-Parker, 2001) during the latter half of the 20th century. The second parts shifts to a contemporary example, reflecting on how language, gender, and culture shape the negotiation of access and building of rapport with Japanese (police) respondents within the context of the researcher’s PhD project on policing responses to image-based sexual abuse in Japan. Finally, this presentation will briefly consider how ethnographic research on the Japanese police occupies a liminal space: it neither fits neatly within the framework of Western criminology nor fully aligns with the orientations of Southern criminology.

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Paper short abstract

This paper traces the representation of law in prime-time drama series between the 1980s to the 2020s. It argues that the surge of popular cultural interest in law around the turn of the century has flagged during post-COVID Japan, and links this televisual analysis with litigation data.

Paper long abstract

One of the enduring debates in Japanese law is whether law “matters” in society. Certainly, comparative litigation data show that, despite a surge of cases around the turn of the century, litigiousness remains low in Japan, even by Asian standards. The paper conducts a historical analysis of the representation of legal themes in Japanese prime-time television dramas from pre-bubble 1980s to post-COVID 2020s, to explore possible explanations for this low legal consciousness. Deploying affect theory and the sociology of emotions, this paper rejects popular explanations based on ‘structural’ accounts – whether cultural or material – in favour of a more dynamic theory that draws on non-discursive emotion.

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This roundtable examines the lawsuit over Yu Miri’s Ishi ni Oyogu Sakana, focusing on creative impulse in model novels and related ethical and legal issues. It highlights gaps between harm suffered by the real-life model and the author’s awareness during the creative process.

Paper long abstract

This roundtable examines an author’s creative impulse and the ethical and legal constraints that may be imposed upon it in the context of model novels, focusing on the lawsuit concerning Yu Miri’s Ishi ni Oyogu Sakana. Approaching the issue from both literary and legal perspectives, it first outlines the process from the work’s creation and publication to the subsequent litigation, highlighting the discrepancy between the mental harm suffered by the real individual who served as the model and the author’s own awareness during the act of creation. In this case, the modeled individual claimed mental distress caused by the novel’s representations and sought damages as well as an injunction against publication. While Yu Miri argued for the necessity of the expressions and invoked freedom of expression, the court granted the claims. The judgment indicates that an author’s creative impulse may be subject to social constraints, while also revealing the lack of an integrated understanding between literature and law regarding the standards and legitimacy of such constraints.

Against this backdrop, the presentation explores the ethical responsibility that arises at the moment a literary work is published as a social act, drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of “responsibility for the Other(la responsabilité pour autrui).” From a literary perspective, it considers the possibility that a strong initial creative impulse and an orientation toward a particular other ultimately failed to respond to the concrete suffering of the individual who became the model, using the author’s own publicly available accounts of her creative process as analytical points of reference. From a legal perspective, the paper organizes the criteria used in judicial determinations of illegality in cases involving model novels and reconsiders the scope of legal responsibility borne by expressive actors in light of insights derived from literary analysis. Through this combined approach, the paper argues that issues surrounding model novels resonate with contemporary problems in digital discourse, such as on social media, where representations can unintentionally fix or distort images of real individuals, and aims to provide a foundation for ethical reflection on these modern challenges.