Much recent scholarship is devoted to projecting Japan’s future and analyzing its prospects as a global power. After two decades of economic stagnation, alarming demographic trends, and the 3/11 triple disaster, some scholars argue that Japan is grappling with an era of precarity, marked with instability and anxiety. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to office in 2012, promoting his economic reform policy, “Abenomics” and within the third “arrow" of this approach targeting structural reforms, he promoted “womenomics”, a term coined by Kathy Matsui of Goldman-Sachs. Prime Minister Abe’s objective is to create a society where "women can shine” and women can participate in the labor market more equitably. However, it is unclear if equality can be achieved when Japanese women still encounter persistent workplace sex discrimination. While labor laws, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, have attempted to tackle workplace sex discrimination, many scholars and critics believe the laws have not done enough. One way Japanese women have attempted to combat workplace sex discrimination is with litigation. Starting in the 1960s, women have resorted to judicial relief to address discriminatory treatment in the workplace. However, while litigation is a powerful tool for social change in Japan, the literature suggests that Japanese women are reluctant to litigate, consistent with the larger consensus that Japan is a low-litigious society. If Japanese women have engaged in “litigation campaigns" and litigation rates are rising, yet Japanese women are reluctant to litigate, this creates an interesting paradox worth exploring. While these two conditions are not unique in and of themselves, what is curious in this nexus is how Japanese women actually relate to the law. This study analyzes how Japanese women relate to the law. Through semi-structured interviews with Japanese working women about their experiences, thoughts, and opinions, this study illustrates how Japanese women “do" law and deepens our understanding of their relationship with the law. In addition to this, this study proposes a new model for measuring litigiousness. Rather than measuring litigiousness in terms of aggregate litigation rates, this study operationalizes litigiousness in terms of personal intent. By applying this model to qualitative data, this study demonstrates that Japanese women actually do demonstrate a moderate degree of litigiousness as it relates to workplace sex discrimination. That is, the nail that sticks up isn't always hammered down.

Thesis (J.S.M.)--Stanford University, 2004. / Submitted to the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies at the Stanford Law School, Stanford University. "May 2004." Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

This thesis sheds new light on the study of law in Japan by exploring legislative interventions and dispute resolution processes in the Japanese field of employment. The academic literature about the legal system of Japan has produced valuable research about various areas of Japanese law, from attempts at explaining patterns of rights assertion in the country to more recent studies about the legal reforms launched by the government of Japan starting from the 2000s. However, it has rarely considered the employment field as a fruitful subject for research. Nonetheless, in the past thirty years, employment has been one of the areas of Japanese law to experience considerable reform. Against the backdrop of the changes in the composition of the Japanese workforce and the bursting of the economic bubble of the beginning of the 1990s, the government of Japan assumed a more prominent role in the regulation of employment relations. In light of these developments, this thesis contributes to the debate on the role of law in Japan by examining this rarely investigated area of the Japanese legal system. Specifically, it focuses on the legislative interventions of the Japanese government to regulate the peripheral workforce of the labour market, namely women and part-time workers, and procedures for the resolution of employment disputes. In doing so, it demonstrates that the efforts of the legislators to enhance the creation of a more inclusive labour market have been fundamentally constrained by ideological and institutional factors, and resulted in an uneven distribution of legal resources among workers which exacerbated existing employment status divisions. This, in turn, has translated into unequal access to justice, affecting the extent to which different categories of workers can obtain redress through the legal apparatus.

Dans les sociétés anciennes et modernes, la santé a été et est aujourd'hui encore une préoccupation capitale. Elle est le signe du niveau de bien être de la collectivité et de la personne. Dans le cadre de l’accès à la santé qui constitue un droit pour tous, le médicament occupe une place importante en France et au Japon, deux pays où l’espérance de vie et le niveau de vie sont élevés et ne cessent d’augmenter. C’est au vu de ces considérations que nous nous interrogeons à travers cette thèse sur la véritable place de l'usager dans la régulation du médicament en France et au Japon qui sont deux pays différents par leur culture mais qui convergent à certains moments dans le droit. L'on pourrait valablement soutenir qu’un bon système de santé se reconnaît par le niveau de protection qu'il accorde à l'usager du médicament. Cela n'est pas aussi simple car divers intérêts sont en jeu. Il est aussi important de savoir comment se solde le traitement des conflits d'intérêts dans la régulation du médicament : protection de l'être humain ou protection de la science? S'il est soutenable que la protection d'un "humain scientifique" existe, il nous appartient de rechercher la réalité de l'existence d'un ensemble de règles permettant d'assurer une "Science plus Humaine". Nous savons et il a été reconnu que le monde de la santé, émotionnel, individualiste, structuré en groupes de pressions très forts et souvent très capitaliste, est difficile à appréhender. / In former and modern societies, health has been and still is a crucial concern. It is the sign of the community’s and the individual’s well-being. In the setting of access to health that is a right for all, the drug has an important place in France and in Japan, which are countries where life expectancy and level of life are high and keeps on increasing. It is in consideration of this, that we are asking ourselves, through this thesis, about the drug user's right place in drug regulation in France and Japan which are countries different by their culture but sometimes converging in law.We can validly hold up that a good health system can be recognized by the level of protection given to the drug user. But this is not so easy because various interests are at stake. It is important to know how these kinds of conflicts are solved in drug law: is it human or science which is protected? If we can hold up that the protection of the "scientific human" exists, we have to research the reality of the existence of rules insuring a “more human” science. We know and it has been said that the field of health, emotional, individualistic, structured in strong lobbies and often capitalistic, is very difficult to comprehend.

Le jeu vidéo est une œuvre hybride difficilement qualifiable. À la frontière entre forme d’art et divertissement, il s’est imposé dans toutes les classes sociales et auprès d’individus de tous âges depuis les années 1980, et ce, partout dans le monde. Au Canada, l’industrie vidéoludique s’est installée dans les années 1990 et a pris une importance considérable depuis le début des années 2000. Or, la loi canadienne sur le droit d’auteur ne prévoit rien quant au jeu vidéo. Est-il protégé ? Si oui, comment le qualifier ? Est-ce un programme d’ordinateur ou une œuvre cinématographique ? Nous verrons que sa qualification n’est pas si aisée, notamment en raison des catégories d’œuvres prévues dans la loi canadienne sur le droit d’auteur. Aussi, il est intéressant de voir comment un pays comme le Japon, dont l’industrie vidéoludique est établie depuis le début des années 1980, conçoit le jeu vidéo selon sa loi sur le droit d’auteur et surtout le qualifie. Nous verrons d’ailleurs que la qualification proposée par la jurisprudence japonaise soulève également des questions. De plus, le jeu vidéo, étant donné son aspect interactif, soulève également des enjeux en ce qui a trait à la titularité des droits d’auteur et voisins. Au Canada, les enjeux tournent davantage autour des contenus générés par les utilisateurs, à savoir les joueurs, dont les formes sont très variées. Au Japon, les enjeux de titularité sont davantage dus à l’ancienneté de l’industrie vidéoludique japonaise et à la difficulté d’en localiser les titulaires afin de développer des remakes et remasters. Nous verrons d’ailleurs que le gouvernement japonais a pris en considération ce problème et est en train de réformer la loi japonaise sur le droit d’auteur afin de répondre aux besoins de l’industrie vidéoludique. / Video games are a hybrid work that is difficult to describe. Straddling the border between art form and entertainment, they have become popular with all social classes and individuals of all ages since the 1980s, all over the world. In Canada, the video game industry took root in the 1990s and has grown considerably since the early 2000s. However, Canadian copyright law is silent on video games. Are they protected? If so, how can they be qualified? Are they computer programs or cinematographic works? We will see that its qualification is not so easy, in particular because of the categories of works provided for in the Canadian copyright law. It is also interesting to see how a country like Japan, whose video game industry has been established since the early 1980s, conceives of video games under its copyright law and, above all, how it classifies them. We will see that the classification proposed by Japanese jurisprudence raises questions as well. In addition, video games, given their interactive nature, also raise issues with respect to copyright and neighbouring rights ownership. In Canada, the issues revolve more around user-generated content which takes many different forms. In Japan, copyright ownership issues are more due to the long-standing nature of the Japanese video game industry and the difficulty of locating rights holders in order to develop remakes and remasters. We will see that the Japanese government has taken this problem into consideration and is in the process of reforming the Japanese copyright law in order to meet the needs of the video game industry.