This year’s Japanese Law Symposium will assess the rights of the Ainu people and examine broader issues of settler colonialism from a comparative perspective.

 

The Ainu are an Indigenous people who live in Hokkaido and the northern part of Honshu, as well as in southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. After the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate, the new Meiji government established the Kaitakushi (Hokkaido Development Commission) in 1869. The purpose the Kaitakushi was to defend against the rapidly advancing Russians and develop the resources of Hokkaido. In order to achieve this, the Kaitakushi encouraged immigration from the mainland south of Honshu and allocated these immigrants land where the Ainu people lived. In 1899, the Former Aborigines Protection Law was enacted. Although a small amount of land was allocated to the Ainu, the Law promoted forced assimilation and prohibited use of the Ainu language and religious ceremonies. From this perspective, the Meiji government’s Hokkaido colonization policy is an example of what is known today as settler colonialism.

 

Pursuant to such policies, the Japanese government denied the existence of Indigenous peoples. However, after the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, there was a growing movement in Japan to recognize the Ainu as an Indigenous people. In 2019, the so-called “New Ainu Law” was enacted, recognizing the Ainu as an Indigenous people and requiring national and local governments to raise awareness of Ainu culture and traditions. In addition, it has become easier to obtain permission to carry out traditional events such as salmon fishing. Even so, compensation for past damages is still inadequate, and the collective right to carry out traditional events has not been recognized. Litigation over these issues continues to this day.

 

 

Symposium Schedule

12:00 Light lunch

12:30 Welcome Remarks: Senior Professor Emeritus Setsuo Miyazawa and Center Director Keith Hand

1:00 Keynote Speech: Professor Kunihiko Yoshida

1:45 Break

2:00 Commentary: Professor Jo Carrillo and Professor Natsu Taylor Saitou

2:45 Break

3:00 Discussion and Q&A

4:00 Closing Remarks: Senior Professor Emeritus Setsuo Miyazawa

 

 

Symposium Participants

 

Keynote Speaker

 

Professor Kunihiko Yoshida, Ph.D. is Yunshan Professor of Law at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China.

 

Professor Yoshida earned a Ph.D. in Civil Law from Tokyo University, Japan, and has visited numerous law schools in the United States, including Northwestern Law School (1989-1991), Stanford Law School (1994-1995), Harvard Law School /Harvard Yenching Institute (2002-2003), the University of Miami Law School (2012-2013), and the University of Colorado Law School (2018-2019). He has written more than 100 articles and case reports and has published ten monographs on a wide range of topics, including contracts, torts, health law, critical legal studies, and critical race theory. His recent publications have focused on property theories, specifically housing, city making, environment, immigration, and reparations. The relational perspective developed by the late Professor Ian Macneil at Northwestern is the common thread across these fields.

 

Professor Yoshida has visited numerous East Asian countries in recent years to conduct collaborative work on reparations issues related to “comfort women” for the Japanese Army, the Nanjing massacre, the Chongqing bombings, and the Jeju tragedies. He has held visiting appointments at universities in Korea, Taiwan, China, Thailand and Cambodia. Since retiring from Hokkaido University, he has served as the distinguished Yunshan Professor of Law at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

 

Professor Yoshida is an expert on reparations for the Ainu people, the indigenous people in Hokkaido, from a civil law perspective. His current research focuses on repatriation, environmental injustice, and traditional Indigenous knowledge to support the pressing agenda of Ainu reparations. In advancing this research, he draws on 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other Indigenous peoples’ practices across the globe. For example, he has recently been working on the Brazilian Minamata disease affecting on Indigenous peoples along the Amazon and taken a great interest in the social solidarity economy in the Global South.

 

Moderator

 

Setsuo Miyazawa, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus at Kobe University and Senior Director Emeritus and Senior Affiliated Scholar at the Center for East Asian Legal Studies (CEALS) at UC Law San Francisco. He is a legal sociologist who holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Law from Hokkaido University. He served as a full professor at four universities in Japan until his mandatory retirement in 2016. Since 1995, he taught as a visiting professor at ten law schools in North America, including Harvard, NYU, and UC Berkeley, before beginning his long-term association with UC Law San Francisco in 2008. He taught at UC Law San Francisco nearly every fall semester from 2008 to 2023 and served as Senior Director of CEALS from 2015 to 2023. He has organized an annual symposium on Japanese law almost every fall since 2012. Professor Miyazawa’s research interests are remarkably broad, encompassing police, criminal justice, legal education, the legal profession, and corporate legal behavior. He has been highly active in international academic organizations. He received the Distinguished Book Award from the Division of International Criminology of the American Society of Criminology, as well as the International Scholarship Prize, the Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award, and the Legacy Award from the Law and Society Association. He was the Founding President of the Asian Law and Society Association and also served as the President of the Asian Society of Criminology.

 

Discussants

 

Jo Carrillo J.D./J.S.D. is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Indigenous Law Center (ILC) at UC Law San Francisco. For over three decades, Professor Carrillo has taught and written extensively in property and property-related subjects, including Federal Indian Law. She earned her B.A. from Stanford University, her J.D. from the University of New Mexico, and her J.S.D. from Stanford Law School. As Faculty Director of the UC Law Indigenous Law Center, Professor Carrillo facilitates a seminar series called Law &. This series brings lawyers, students, and California Tribal leaders into the law school classroom to discuss land back and land stewardship issues. To date, Law & Seminars have covered such topics as Tribal Law, International Indigenous Peoples Rights Law (a seminar that includes instructors from all common law countries), Indigenous Land Acknowledgments (with Jonathan Cordero, Metush (Chair) of the Ramaytush Tribe and Executive Director of the Association of Ramaytush Oholone) and Enhancing Access to Land and Stewardship (with Curtis Berkey of Berkey Williams and supported by a grant from the Resources Legacy Fund). Recently, again with assistance from the Resources Legacy Fund, Professor Carrillo has undertaken to study land back transfer documents.

 

As a faculty member, Professor Carrillo has served on the UC Law SF Legacy Committee. She now serves on the UC Law SF Restorative Justice Advisory Board, which counsels UC Law SF Chancellor and Dean David Faigman on decanal-initiated restorative justice efforts for Indigenous communities in California. As a long-term project, Professor Carrillo is co-editing a volume, with UCLA Professor of History Benjamin Madley, on redressing 19th century state sponsored harms against California Indigenous Peoples.

 

Natsu Taylor Saito, J.D. is a Regents’ Professor Emerita at Georgia State University’s College of Law in Atlanta, Georgia, where she taught courses on race, indigeneity, immigration, international law, and human rights for almost 30 years. A graduate of Yale Law School and an activist attorney, she remains involved in efforts to defend Indigenous rights, contest police and prosecutorial misconduct, and protect academic freedom. Professor Saito is the author of several dozen law review articles as well as three books: From Chinese Exclusion to Guantánamo Bay: Plenary Power and the Prerogative State (University of Colorado Press, 2006), Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law (New York University Press, 2010), and Settler Colonialism, Race and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists (New York University Press, 2020)

 

 

Light lunch to be served.

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