Histories of international legal theories in Japan

From dialogue to conversation

Maiko Meguro, Yota Negishi

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526174949
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526174932
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: Law

This volume offers the first systematic account of Japanese international legal theory, tracing more than a century of scholarship across thirteen influential thinkers. Edited by leading Japanese scholars, it examines how theorists working outside international law's Western centre developed sophisticated frameworks to navigate tensions between Western modernity and their own legal and intellectual traditions. The book's central contribution proposes "conversation"—a mode of sustained engagement that respects irreducible differences between legal cultures—as an alternative to "dialogue," which often reinforces hierarchy by presuming full reconciliation of perspectives. Through detailed intellectual biographies spanning six historical periods, contributors show how Japanese scholars strategically adopted legal positivism, articulated transcivilizational approaches, and advanced concepts of normative multilateralism. Aimed at scholars of international law, legal theory, and comparative traditions, the volume demonstrates that the field's future depends on genuinely reciprocal, coexisting perspectives.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 SENGA Tsurutaro: positivism against civilisational Eurocentrism in international law
• 2 YOKOTA Kisaburo: between value-neutrality, and internationalist, pacifist and democratic ideals
• 3 TAOKA Ryoichi: doctor eximius as a steadfast origin point in Japanese tradition
• 4 YASUI Kaoru: from academic to activist
• 5 TANAKA Kotaro: an unparalleled jurist with natural law tradition
• 6 TABATA Shigejiro: Japan’s leading authority in the twentieth century on international law and its history
• 7 SOGAWA Takeo: anti-positivist and realist scholar
• 8 YAMAMOTO Soji: thorough positivist in Japanese international law society
• 9 ISHIMOTO Yasuo: the ‘structural transformation’ of international law
• 10 MATSUI Yoshiro: the social science of international law
• 11 KOTERA Akira: struggle of international legal scholars living on the ‘periphery’ of international law
• 12 ONUMA Yasuaki: a transcivilisationalist international lawyer
• 13 MOGAMI Toshiki: an unfrenzied normative realist
• Index