Introduction of western Legal System into the East

本项目的主要目的是分析西方法律制度在东方，特别是韩国、泰国和日本的引进情况。在日本，西方法律制度的引进这一话题一直是从比较日本和西方国家的案例的角度来讨论的。有学者指出，日本的法律制度是非常独特的，这是日本所独有的。但在我们看来，日本的这些特殊制度似乎具有其他亚洲国家的共同特征。因此，我们试图通过将韩国和泰国的案例与日本的案例进行比较来重新审视这个话题。我们之所以选择这两个国家，是因为韩国像日本一样既受到佛教的影响，也受到儒家思想的影响，而泰国只受到佛教的影响。我们曾于1991年7月、9月和11月三次访问韩国进行研究。我们采访了法学教授、法官、从业人员和一家法律研究所的工作人员。在这些访谈之后，我们集中讨论了上述话题中的三个问题，(1)法律意识，(2)法律纠纷的解决制度，(3)家庭制度和法律。1991年11月，我们与20名韩国专家举行了学术会议，讨论了这三个问题。会议上发表的论文计划在日本和韩国发表。此外，我们还于1992年1月访问了泰国。在泰国，我们采访了法学教授、法官、从业人员等，就像在韩国一样。但我们认为，有必要就这三个问题提供更多信息，以分析和比较韩国的情况。我们打算在不久的将来再次对这些问题进行研究，特别是法律意识。

The main purpose of this project is to analyze the introduction of Western legal system into the East, especially South Korea, Thailand and Japan. In Japan, this topic, the introduction of Western legal system, has been discussed from the viewpoint of comparing Japanese case with Western countries' ones. Some scholars have pointed out that Japanese legal system is very unique which which are peculiar to Japan. But these peculiar systems to Japan seem, in our opinion, to have common characteristics to other Asian countries. Therefore, we try to re-examine this topic by comparing the South Korean and the Thai cases to the Japanese one in this project. The reasons why we choose these two countries are that South Korea have been influenced both by the buddhist and the confucian like Japan, and that Thailand has been influenced only by the buddhist.We visited South Korea to research the above topic three times, in July, September and November 1991. We had interviews with professors of law, Judges, practitioners and staffs of a legal research institute. After these interviews, we focus on three issues among the above topic, (1) Legal Consciousness, (2) the Settlement System of Legal Disputes and(3) Family System and Law. We took place the academic meeting with twenty Korean specialist to discuss the three issues in November 1991. The given papers at the meeting are scheduled to publish both in Japan and in South Korea.In addition, we visited Thailand in January 1992. In Thailand, we took interviews with professors of law, judges, practitioners and so on, like in South Korea. But we feel that more information on these three topics is necessary to analyze and to compare to South Korea's case. We intend to conduct a research on these issues, especially the legal consciousness in near future again.