was a Japanese jurist. He was a prominent representative of post-war

liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. ...

in Japan and the country's leading legal sociologist. Serving as Sakae Wagatsuma's assistant after 1932, Kawashima was appointed professor of civil law at the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

in 1934. In his writings, he sought to develop a system of modern, Western, capitalist society based on the principle of the exchange of goods, which he contrasted to Japanese society with its remaining pre-modern and feudalist elements. His criticism of Japanese domestic ideology in (1954) was a popular success. As a collaborator on the post-war reform of Japanese family law, Kawashima was unable to realize his ambitious ideas, but served as a counterweight to conservatives including Eiichi Makino. In his 1963 article "Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan", he argued that although litigation is not a preferred method of dispute resolution anywhere, the Japanese have a particular cultural aversion to litigation. The article has sparked heated debate, generating various perspectives, notably John Haley's "The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant" and Mark Ramseyer's "Reluctant Litigant Revisited".

References

* 1909 births 1992 deaths Academic staff of the University of Tokyo Japanese jurists {{Japan-law-bio-stub