Published on July 1, 2021
Job titles and other details are as of the time of publication.
(The interview was conducted in Japanese and was thereafter translated into English.)

Family Law contains regulations regarding family, divorce, parent-child relationships, and inheritance

The law I specialize in is civil law, which governs legal relationships between private individuals. The Civil Code consists of a total of 1,050 articles, but the area I am particularly interested in studying is the so-called “family law.” “Family law” refers to Article 725 onward of the Civil Code, where you find “Part IV Relatives” and “Part V Succession.” These parts contain regulations regarding family, divorce, parent-child relationships, and inheritance. Japan’s family law was promulgated and enforced in 1898, as part of the so-called Meiji Civil Code. A characteristic of family law before the Second World War was the existence of a “family system (ie)” led by the head of the household. After the war, the Meiji Civil Code was revised in 1947, because it violated Constitutional values such as respect for the individual, equality under the law, and the essential equality of both sexes. At that time, the legislator focused on the nuclear family, which consists of a married couple and their minor children. Despite the diversification of family structures since then, including increases in divorces and remarriages, no major reforms have been made to family law for a long time, with the 1996 Civil Code Reform Guidelines, which suggested extensive changes to family law, being shelved.

However, the situation changed significantly from the 2010s. In particular, since the late 2010s, revisions to the family law portion of the Civil Code came one after another to the extent that, in retrospect, it may be called “the era of major family law revision.” I will discuss these amendments later, but since I started my career as a researcher in 2009, it was very impressive to be able to witness the development of these family law revisions.

As a student, I felt that I was not good at the general provisions of civil law, which were highly abstract

My current research focus is on family law. Initially, I was researching how assets can be disposed of through a will. However, I am now expanding my research to include the way families manage assets for minors and the elderly, how to establish legal parent-child relationships, and how parents engage with children after divorce.

When I started studying law at university, I was aspiring to become a prosecutor. The reason was that I took part in a mock trial in high school and admired the work of a prosecutor after watching a TV drama. There were no researchers around me, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be a researcher, so research wasn’t an option for me as a career path. I used to think that a researcher was a job for someone who is good at abstract theory, and it was impossible for me to become a researcher. However, in my third year, I chose several seminars, including a seminar on criminal law, and after discovering how fun it is to delve into a single theme, I started to have a vague idea that a career as a researcher might be an option.

Sometimes, when I am asked why I chose civil law as my research subject, I think about how unexpected things can happen in life. The General Provisions of the Civil Code, which I first learned at the Faculty of Law, were extremely abstract, and I was unable to get a firm grasp at the time. But now when I reread my notes I took back then, I can see that my professor gave very content-rich lectures.

As a side note, I’m sure there are many students like me who get stuck in the difficult-to-understand General Provisions at the beginning of studying the Civil Code. Therefore, when I give lectures on the General Provisions of the Civil Code, I tell the students, “You may feel like you don’t understand it now, but that’s okay. You’ll have a deeper understanding once you’ve learned the entire Civil Code, so I don’t want you to worry.”

When I took a course on Family Law in my fourth year of university, I remember finding it interesting because there were many cases that were familiar and easy for me to picture. The professor in charge of the course dealt with cutting-edge issues and gave extremely rich lectures that covered the fundamental issues of Family Law, which greatly helped to bridge the distance between me and the Civil Code. Even after I started teaching Family Law at university, I continue to review my notes from that time. The professor who was in charge of Family Law later became my supervisor, and I would not have become a researcher if I hadn’t met him. Perhaps the reason I became a researcher was not because of my encounter with Family Law, but because of my encounter with my supervisor.

I found it rewarding that researchers of legal studies are not only required to apply the provisions but also to think and interpret

For example, in the case of surrogacy, which was widely covered in the media at the time, there was a heated debate about who was the legal mother. In the past, it was assumed that the woman who gave birth to a child was the child’s biological mother, and, therefore, the woman who gave birth to the child was considered to be the legal mother. However, when this assumption became uncertain due to advances in technology, the question arose whether it was okay to continue applying the previous rules without making any changes. I felt that I came to understand the role of legal studies, that is, in the world of law, people involved in the law must think and interpret laws, not just apply them mechanically. At the same time, I started to think about becoming a researcher myself, eager to think further about these issues in my own way.

I was excited about delving into ideas from various angles and summarizing them in a paper

However, at that stage I wasn’t sure if I could really pursue a career as a researcher. At the time, the university I was enrolled in had a policy of requiring students aiming to become researchers to go to law school rather than a master’s program. Partly because of this, I went on to law school and learned a wide range of things about law in general.

During my law school days, I took a course called “Research Paper” in which I had to write a paper on a subject that I was interested in, which made me realize that I might want to become a researcher. My subject was surrogacy and how to decide who is the mother of a child born through assisted reproductive technology.

To write my thesis, I researched prior literature, court precedents, and foreign jurisdictions. I then delved into my ideas from various angles, which turned out to be a very exciting and enjoyable experience. Also, although the paper was less than 20 A4-size pages, I wrote up a paper on the problem I had set and received a certain level of evaluation, which made me feel that I might be able to work as a researcher.

Upon graduation from law school, I began my career as a researcher in 2009. After working at Tohoku University, I moved to Hitotsubashi University, where I am currently employed.

Family law is difficult to legislate, but legal reforms progressed rapidly as the nature of family changed

As mentioned in the beginning, family law has undergone a series of major revisions since the late 2010s.

The inheritance provisions of the Civil Code were revised based on the Supreme Court’s decision, which found that the provision of the Civil Code that set the inheritance share of an illegitimate child at half that of a legitimate child was unconstitutional. As a result, inheritance law was revised. The reason for this is the need to respond to an aging society and provide legal protection for spouses. Subsequently, the law regarding special adoptions was revised from the perspective of promoting child welfare, and the legitimacy presumption system that determines the establishment of parent-child relationships was reviewed from the perspective of the need to resolve the issue of unregistered persons. Recently, discussions have begun about legislation regarding how children should be raised after divorce.

When I was a student, I never imagined that so many legal reforms would be made all at once. This is because I had long thought of family law as an area of the Civil Code where legislation has not progressed very much. I believe that the question of why family law amendments are being enacted one after another at this point in time will become a research topic itself in the future. However, what is clear is that the nature of families and how we think of families is changing, and that amendments to laws are required in order to solve problems that are occurring in society.

When confronting a legislative problem, it is of course necessary to think about how to solve the problem, but in doing so, I think it is also necessary to consider the essential meaning of the existing system. For example, when reviewing the system for establishing paternity after divorces in order to solve the problem of people without family registers, I think it is necessary to consider what the system for establishing paternity is for in the first place. Also, when changing the rules to solve a problem that is occurring, I think it is important to pay attention to how it will affect cases where problems are not currently occurring, and how changing the rules will change the system as a whole.

Family law is an area of legal studies that stimulates intellectual curiosity

First of all, the purpose of legal studies is not to memorize the entirety of the six major laws and rigidly adhere to the provisions. Legal studies exist to think about and learn how to apply existing dispute resolution rules when a new problem arises, and if it cannot be addressed through interpretation, to think about whether it is necessary to respond through legislation. I believe that today’s family law is an area that strongly reflects that purpose.

The study of law, including family law, is not something that is far removed from us. In my lectures at Hitotsubashi University, I hope to be able to convey to students the excitement of legal studies.