Expressions of love matter greatly in our lives. But how do love and emotions shape the processes of trials and legal decisions by professional judges once our relationships face serious problems and turn into tragedies? In Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law, Mark D. West introduces us to a new side of the judiciary. Comparing and contrasting equivalent cases and situations in the United States with his careful analyses of 2,700 Japanese court opinions in the 1990s and 2000s, West reveals judges' particular world views of love, sex, and marriage, and ultimately of law and society in Japan (p. 7). The book also presents demographic data and public opinions from the government's national statistics, studies by Japan scholars, and the author's interviews with Japanese legal specialists. Drawing on these sources, West contributes not simply to our understanding of an official legal perspective on love, sex, and marriage, or of the judicial world in Japan; his work also guides us to consider how cultural conceptualizations of intimacy and the institutional arrangements of judiciaries influence the ways cases play out in the legal arena.
West argues that the concept of “love,” which we typically do not associate with legal decision making, plays a striking role in judicial verdicts and judges' reasoning in Japan. He recognizes that many Japanese are relatively reserved in expressing the feelings of “love” verbally in their personal interactions, let alone in public. The study starts with the assumption that Japanese judges do not concern themselves with legally trivial matters of the heart (p. 10). Yet, in his analysis of legal reports and interviews with lawyers and judges, West demonstrates that love-related expressions often appear unexpectedly and shape the outcomes of cases; and surprisingly, love matters most in criminal cases rather than in cases about marriage and divorce. West conceptualizes his rather astonishing findings on judicial commentaries with an introduction and analysis of the judicial system and, in particular, the judge's career path in Japan—an extremely homogeneous, age-graded, and elitist structure. West also provides a valuable description of popular and gendered understandings of “love” as pain and suffering in Japan, in marked contrast to American conceptions of love as warm and caring, a positive necessity in life. Social normative expectation or (ab)normality is another important factor affecting judges' decisions on family conflicts. West's findings help the reader comprehend that there is in fact little separation of love from law in Japanese judicial society. The investigated court cases include extramarital affairs and divorce, disputes in romantic relationships, and sexual harassment and assaults from the regional family courts to the highest court with criminal cases in Japan.
This is a fascinating and innovative study, utilizing “love” as an analytical tool to explore and understand a judicial world with a different cultural and historical background. Yet, West is aware of the limitations of his study: the data mostly exclude same-sex relationships, and legal cases do not represent the everyday life of the average Japanese person. I was also left wondering about the role of money and its interaction with love in such court cases and judicial decisions. Is it not the case that economic matters at least partially, and in some cases greatly, shape issues around family and other intimate relations? Money is not the focus of the study; nevertheless, it affects people's daily life and thus behaviors. Attention to economic effects on relationships, even if absent in judicial discussions, would strengthen the analysis, especially in the case of a society like Japan, where a huge gender gap exists in employment and income.
Some might argue that this work trivializes the unique judicial culture of an East Asian society. Rather, I would argue that the book informs how specialists of law like the judges in the study could “translate incidents into legal dramas, morality plays, and cautionary tales” and affect us “by encouraging change and by shaping incentives for proper behavior” (pp. 218–19). Providing insightful evidence and a fresh perspective on conflicts and tragedies around love, sex, and marriage, Lovesick Japan prompts us to reconsider the power of law, language, and judicial elites in American society as well.
