The law in Japanese film

[tetsuwan@comcast.net]

What about that "reality show," "Legal Service So Good You Have to Wait in Line" or something like that . . .

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> Kurosawa's Scandal has a pretty large chunk of the narrative devoted to 
> to class and the quality of legal representation one can afford (plus Ri Ko 
> Ran in her 
> second life as Yamaguchi Yoshiko). 
> 
> There is also a TV comedy drama called something like Onna bengoshi. It does 
> address issues of class and gender being worked out before the bench. The 
> main character's father was a lawyer 
> who often argued before the big city judge she usually argues before and, 
> like 
> her father, she and the judge have a love/hate relationship. She is supposed 
> to 
> be a very ethical/moral person (like her father) from Okinawa whose personal 
> sense of right and wrong consistently conflicts with the formalism and 
> procedural points that ultimately decide the cases. Most of the episodes 
> turn on how her standing up for principle affects the attitudes of the 
> participants in the cases such that the formal legal procedure accidentally 
> ends up coming to the just conclusion. There is also a rivalry with another 
> female lawyer who is a state prosecutor and they have absolutely no use for 
> one another. It's often silly, but I found it interesting from a 
> sociological and gender angle. 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Aaron Gerow" 
> To: 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 1:18 PM 
> Subject: Re: The law in Japanese film 
> 
> 
> > > Is Japanese law so boring? 
> > 
> > I think the lack of courtroom dramas in Japanese film has to do with 
> > the fact that the legal world has long been constructed in Japan as the 
> > realm of benevolent elites who operate in a different sphere from us 
> > everyday people. This has some relation to the fact the decision-making 
> > process is less "democratic" (no jury by peers). But it also has much 
> > to do with the extreme difficulty involved in becoming a lawyer, the 
> > obtuseness of legal language (until recently, laws were written in a 
> > rather archaic language, including using katakana instead of hiragana), 
> > and an ideology from the Meiji era that it is legal-trained bureaucrats 
> > who should be trusted as objective managers of the nation and its 
> > people. The different narrative of the court process may also be seen 
> > as less cinematic. The long series of legal decisions that defy common 
> > sense logic only augments the impression of this being a different 
> > world. The Japanese court system is aware that this impression has in 
> > some ways become detrimental, so there have been committees formed to 
> > discuss improving the image of the judicial system through specific 
> > measures, some of which, such as making it easier to be a lawyer and 
> > creating the saibanin seido (which will bring lay people into the 
> > decision-making process in some cases), are being implemented. 
> > 
> > That said, there are still a number of films that have lengthy court 
> > scenes. A recent example is Morita's Keiho, which becomes a polemic on 
> > the insanity defense. Yamamoto Satsuo's Nihon dorobo monogatari has a 
> > long, rather humorous court scene. Of course Nakahara Shun's 12-nin no 
> > yasashii Nihonjin, from a script by Mitani Koki, is an imagination of a 
> > jury system in Japan, playing off 12 Angry Men. From around the same 
> > time there's Kumai Kei's Hikarikoge. For earlier films there's 
> > Masumura's Kuro no hokokusho or Tsuma wa kokuhakusuru, and Imai 
> > Tadashi's famous Mahiru no ankoku$B!#(B 
> > 
> > Aaron Gerow 
> > Assistant Professor 
> > Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures 
> > Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies Program 
> > Yale University 
> > 53 Wall Street, Room 316 
> > PO Box 208363 
> > New Haven, CT 06520-8363 
> > USA 
> > Phone: 1-203-432-7082 
> > Fax: 1-203-432-6764 
> > e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu 
> > 
> > 
> 
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