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
April 13th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Just read the excerpt from your book on amazon.. Nothing short of amazing! I love the style of which you have written this and laughed about the shinto shrine neighbouring the baseball stadium. I have now purchased your book thank you very much or should I say Domo Arigato Gozaimasu!
If anyone is reading this, I would recommend this to anyone, and also look at a book called dogs & demons by Alex Kerr.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Thanks for these kind remarks and hope you enjoy the book…Alan
May 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
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.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:33 am
crimes drop, suicides rise
July 21st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
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.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 am
wao! I was about to write about criminal organizations playing a part on crime rates, but I said, um.. He’s an antropologist let me wait; I think anybody who has been in Japan for at least a year will notice that.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Awesome !!! Kind Regards from Ukraine.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Every woman I know here in Japan has been sexually assaulted on crowded trains, especially underage girls. None of this is reported because nothing will be done by the police.
99% conviction rate is a result of 23 days of police detention for anyone arrested. Torture is standard practice. Nothing is recorded, no lawyers are present. Even basic research would reveal this. There is little thieving here because most people are rich. Crime rates are increasing as people become less affluent.
August 21st, 2009 at 2:10 pm
This is a great lecture! I have just one small correction to make: Professor Macfarlane spells out the term for the “managed society” as “kandi-shakai”. This is a mistake — the term is actually “kanri shakai”, as googling both terms will make clear.
January 24th, 2011 at 2:59 am
there is no relation between the two.
January 24th, 2011 at 7:28 am
you don’t live in Japan then :-)
January 24th, 2011 at 7:42 am
why would that matter? can you prove or explain the relation between the two?
January 27th, 2011 at 7:16 pm
if I tell you about a society that is forcing and feeding social peace at all costs, it becomes clear that the only way out is suiscide
January 28th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
what makes you think japan is forcing social peace? Have you actually considered the actual reasons why those particular individuals commit suicide?
January 30th, 2011 at 11:55 am
there’s no authority imposing rules, but it’s a social self feeding system. Japanese people referred often to this system as an hammer nailing nails down. Indipendent, off the rules minds, people searcing a deeper form of communinication (out of the “ceremony”) are considered “outlaws”. This is a theme often recurring with Japanese people working for a long period of time abroad, where they often developed a multi point of view way of thinking. These “experienced” people (continue)
January 30th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
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
January 30th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
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
January 30th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
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
January 30th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
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
January 30th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
that all sounds very reasonable but it doesn’t seem to substantiate any relation between crime rates and suicide rates
January 31st, 2011 at 11:20 am
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 🙂
February 5th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
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.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Is he the brother of Seth Macfarlane :D?
October 11th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
This was excellent and very thankful to Professor Macfarlane for making this available. I found it on itunes btw.
Best,
Sean
December 29th, 2011 at 7:59 am
Excellent lecture, I will be raising points made in this lecture about the Masato Uchishiba case and I will be linking this video.