Law and Society in Imperial Japan: Suehiro Izutaro and the Search ...

These questions about jurisprudence and justice resonate with our own experience today. Societies in liberal democracies are increasingly fracturing along different fault lines, and many parties look to the state as the final—perhaps only—arbiter of social conflict. The debate over activist judges flares up regularly, as well, bringing up the same questions that Suehiro tackled in the 1920s and 30s: What is the proper role of law? How much leeway should judges have in deciding when the law applies and when it should be transcended? Does anything stand behind the laws in lawbooks, or behind the decisions that judges make? Can the state pacify and unify a society, or is society the predecessor and ruler of the state? These are hard questions, and a study of Suehiro’s career and writings can help us find answers to them. Just as the lines we draw on the past are invisible to those who lived then, so the line we draw separating the past from the present turns out to be equally imaginary.