In 1967, the legal scholar Kawashima Takeyoshi published Nihonjin no hō-ishiki (The Legal Consciousness of the Japanese). He argued that the Japanese lacked a sense of rights. Since the Edo period, lawsuits had often ended not in a judgment but in a settlement between the parties. A dispute was best settled “roundly,” in a way that did not destroy the community relationship.
The book became the starting point of postwar research on legal consciousness. Later scholars have disputed much of it.