Paper short abstract:

This paper considers on the gap between legal system and legal order/social situation in Japan,focusing on legal cultures relating to female Ten-no and conjugal name.

Paper long abstract:

From the late 19th century Japan has been establishing a modern legal system, based on the western, first German, ones. After the World War Ⅱ　Japanese government enacted the democratic Japanese Constitution under an American occupation. Even though it has already passed more than sixty years after its enactment, there still, in Japanese society, exist various non-democratic elements which are unsuitable to the Constitution. Namely there is a gap between legal system, mainly based on western one, and legal order/social situation which is based on legal culture. This paper analyses this gap from the following two aspects, (1)first so-called 'female Ten-no problem', namely prohibition of female Ten-no by the Imperial house Hold Law(1947), and (2)secondly the problem of conjugal name, that is the fact that more than 97 ％ couples 'choose' husbands' family names as their conjugal names.