Relationships with Research both within Japan and Abroad
A considerable amount of research concerning the problems of the relationship between legal cultures and legal systems and of the reception of law is available in the fields of legal history, the comparative study of law and legal anthropology. Still, these prior researches have been subject to certain limitations. Legal history tends to limit itself to the exegesis of sources, while the comparative study of law tends to exhaust itself in typological and static comparisons. In legal anthropology on the other hand, the focus is on contrasting primitive to modern or contemporary law. Such research is important with no doubt. There is yet a need for research that probes deeper into the fundamental question of how the mutual relations between legal cultures and legal systems are dynamically structured and function in detail.
Meanwhile “creole” as a phenomenon of multi-layered fusion in life-styles and language has received much attention in cultural anthropology in recent years. It is to be expected that such a perspective will contribute to an understanding of the creative generation of social order as well. This research project seeks to develop this perspective further by applying it to the field of legal studies, and to shed new explanatory light on this fundamental question thereby. A similar problem orientation has been manifested both within and outside Japan on occasions, but it has so far been confined to general declarations of intent. Given this situation, the present research project has unprecedented significance in that it investigates the “creole of law” and the agency law formation involved in it in a multi-dimensional fashion. At the same time, it will establish the “creole of law” as a new field for debate and develop a new form of cooperative research in basic law thereby.
