Law and Justice in Japan - a lecture

One of two lectures given to undergraduates in anthropology at Cambridge University in 2008 by Alan Macfarlane. For a downloadable version, reading list and context, please see www.alanmacfarlane.com

All revenues go to World Oral Literature Project

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Japan
• legal
• anthropology
• law
• courts
• juries

[GeorgeH1972]

interesting video, I suppose very true.

The sound is very low, one must turn the sound way high, but someone constantly caughing into the microphone, most likely the one who taped it. Next time take some caugh candy or something....

[ayabaya]

Thanks for these kind remarks and hope you enjoy the book...Alan

[efex2007]

In a world where education has been transformed into an expensive commodity, I can only thank for the generosity of making it available on Youtube.

I wish more professors would have this initiative.

[Nagare89]

I praise MIT for taking the initiative in just that. They have something called Opencourse ware, a website where the school uploads lecture videos from various courses. Free education from one of the world's finest universities.

[anikinippon]

Excellent lecture, I will be raising points made in this lecture about the Masato Uchishiba case and I will be linking this video.

[shonstar]

This was excellent and very thankful to Professor Macfarlane for making this available. I found it on itunes btw.

Best,

Sean

[TheWelshboy42]

Is he the brother of Seth Macfarlane :D?

[vkman34]

Excellent lecture. Here's an example of what he's talking about: when you have a road accident between two people in Japan, the Police come out and inspect the scene, and apportion blame on a percentage basis. So they might say for example it's 20% person A, and 80% person B. The insurance companies pay out according to the percentages decided by the Police. So if someone hits your car from behind, it's still your fault (a bit) and you're still liable.

[mochiam]

@RayDandy social self-imposed structure applys great stress on people because it kills creativity in favour of the mainstream. People become susceptible to big personal crisis unrelated in size with the underlying problem. I hope this is clearer now, I wouldn't be able to express it better :-)

[RayDandy]

@mochiam  that all sounds very reasonable but it doesn't seem to substantiate any relation between crime rates and suicide rates

[mochiam]

@mochiam suicide one of which very close to my japanese family. I think I've enough merit and knowledge to talk about japanese culture, even if I'm not a japanese national

[mochiam]

@mochiam units. Especially for young people social and work pressure is becoming unbeareable and the number of young people moving abroad, even to China is growing rapidly.

The way you reply to my posts make me think that you have strong links with Japan, and probably makes you less incline to take in account my considerations, but I assure you that most of the things I reported you come from personal experience and by NHK (national TV). In 11 years I came in contact with with 4 cases of

[mochiam]

@mochiam is freakingly scared of opposite sex. 75% of young women don't want to marry Japanese men. The stress and culture of Japanese men often lead to violence in the family. The lack of individualism (that means being able to live alone) and self consciosness lead also to mass suicides expecially during holidays. This December my train was delayed twice because of suicides, often involiving young people. Even if the official data refer of 32000 suicides per year,the real data are about 50000

[mochiam]

@mochiam are often push aside when back home. I've witnessed many cases. Never forget for a second that Japan is an island where media are strictly controlled and filter informations against or off their customs. In few words there's not much intellectual freedom. Many suicides come from overwork, the social inability to think that life has a higher value than the success of the company, the inability to say no to terrible requests on job places, often of sexual nature. Female population is