Basic Features of the Legal, Political, and Economic Thought of Japan

Abstract

Among the main features of the Japanese ways of thinking, the acceptance of actuality and the tendency to emphasize a particular social nexus are important for considering Japanese legal, political, and economic thought. The Japanese tend to esteem highly man's natural dispositions. The tendency toward humanitarianism has been traditional. The spirit of fulfilling universal religions through politics caused Japan's rulers to deal with people with affection and compassion. Cruel punishments have been lacking when Buddhism has been influential. The love of human beings is closely connected with the love of the beauties of Nature in Japanese thought and culture. The universal moral solidarity of a community has been the social ideal in Japan. What was stressed was concord or harmony as the principle of a community. The democratic way of managing a conference was realized in the remote past. Dictatorship on the part of a sovereign was denounced. Japanese monarchy or the Emperor Institution developed as something different from dictatorship. The Japanese do not always want to resort to legal measures. Mediation plays an important role among the common people. This tendency is based upon the underlying traditional philosophical points of view of the Japanese, which are closely connected with social and topographical reasons. Law-giving was not lacking even in the genuinely Shintoist, pre-Bud79