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“Land Without Identifiable Ownership” in the Post-East Japan Earthquake Recovery: Lawful Land-Grabbing in Neoliberal Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2024

Yuka Kaneko Open the ORCID record for Yuka Kaneko [Opens in a new window]
Yuka Kaneko*
Affiliation:
Center for Social System Innovation, Kobe University, Nada, Kobe, Japan
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper, with a focus on the status of tsunami disaster victims affected by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake, investigates into the status of private property rights in facing with the reviving legal instrumentalism in Japan, under the campaign of land law reform for the elimination of “land without identifiable owners” in the name of facilitating the disaster recovery, by means of the “special zone” method or the designation of lawless areas where the normal time law is excluded, with the particularly targeted area for such exclusion being the constitutional requirements of due process and fair compensation in public taking. Under the extraordinary setting of absolute majority of conservative party at the National Diet in the aftermath of the 2011 great disaster, legislations in Japan during this decade have been characterized by a manifestation of neo-liberal policy, driving the entire Japanese legal system into a corner. Facts observed in present Japanese society are not different from those observed in other authoritarian regimes in Asia, including the phenomenon of “land grabbing” by the governmental projects, which Asia once experienced a century ago for the colonial land enclosure by “wasteland management.”

Keywords

land registrationdisaster recoveryCivil Code of Japanland-grabbinglegal instrumentalism
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 2024 , pp. 103 - 130
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Asian Journal of Law and Society

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