Book Review by Fujio Hamada
It would hardly be disputed that Japan's success in the arena of international economic competition is attributable, to some extent at least, to her workers and labor unions, who almost uniformly appear to have a peculiar penchant for being co-operative and harmonious with management, and to Japan's consequent relatively peaceful industrial relations. It is quite natural for foreign observers to ask why only Japan enjoys labor and industrial relations that, for good or ill, are so unusually co-operative. Questions such as these have led several American industrial relations specialists to produce notable research works on the subject. As far as research on the legal aspects and under-pinnings of Japan's labor and industrial relations is concerned, however, the situation is very different. Although detailed information about Japanese labor law has long been needed in the United States for reasons both academic and practical, hitherto virtually no dependable study has been conducted by an American scholar. This lack may be explained by the language barrier, the sheer scarcity of English-language materials in Japan, and the many differences between the social structures of the two countries. Therefore, the first thing that should be noted about this book is that it is literally the first comprehensive research work on Japanese labor law published on the American side. It can easily be imagined that in completing his study, the author must have struggled with many unusual difficulties along the way.
The principal goal of Japan's Reshaping of American Labor Law is to delineate important aspects of Japanese labor law with reference to and in comparison with its American counterpart, recognizing (as indicated by the book's title) that there are conspicuous similarities between the two bodies of law. In the course of identifying the major traits of Japanese labor law, the author also examines whether readers in the United States may derive any meaningful lessons from the Japanese legal model, despite the different institutional and cultural settings of the two bodies of law. The approach that Professor Gould adopts for this purpose is many-sided and thorough. His study examines Japanese law not only from the statutory and administrative points of view, but also in its social and historical context.
About the Author
Fujio Hamada.
Citation
58 Tul. L. Rev. 1562 (1984)