Il 10 e l’11 settembre 2015 si terrà a Londra, presso prestigiosa Scuola di Studi Orientali e Africani, ai più nota come SOAS, la Conferenza annuale dell’Associazione britannica per gli studi giapponesi.
Qui la pagina di presentazione, e qui il ricco programma.

Tra i relatori, nella sessione 4 di venerdì dal titolo “Japanese Law and the Rhetoric of Legal Orientalism: Contesting the Terrain“, figurano due studiosi italiani: Giorgio F. Colombo e Fabiana Marinaro, già noti ai lettori di questo blog. Accanto a loro Lawrence Repeta e Dimitri Vanoverbeke.
Il programma contiene i riassunti degli interventi dei quattro relatori. Riporto la presentazione della sessione:

This panel aims to offer a critical analysis of the functioning of the Japanese legal system and of the role law plays in Japan, thereby challenging the still widespread stereotypical views about the irrelevance of law in Japanese society.
Despite the work produced by a number of (often) American scholars, in Europe the subject of law in Japan remains confined to a niche; and narratives about the Japanese legal system appear – still – to be locked into an orientalist perspective which dismisses its importance in Japanese society. What is more, there exists usually a great divide, and poor communication, between the few experts on the subject and scholars from other fields.
Yet, today, Japan is even more under the spotlight of legal and political discussion. The reforms stemmed from the recommendations of the Justice System Reform Council in 2001 are becoming visible; whilst the Abe administration launched a number of structural reform plans, from the proposed amendments to the Japanese Constitution to more specific legal reforms in key sectors such as fiscal and labour market policies. Against this backcloth, the proposed papers investigate the approach to the rule of law in Japan in order to expose what role can and does law play in the country. It will do so by exploring the Japanese legal system from different theoretical and methodological perspectives: after a systematic review of how Japanese law was misrepresented in general comparative law (with specific references to dispute resolution) (Colombo), the panel will offer critical remarks on the labour policy regarding atypical (non-regular) employment (Marinaro) and the participation of citizens and their on-going struggle for democracy which sees the conflicts of different social fields result in a consolidation of the force of law in Japan (Vanoverbeke).