What Counts in Navigating Behaviour -Do General Attitudes Really Matter?-
What Counts in Navigating Behaviour -Do General Attitudes Really Matter?-

Summary/Abstract: Since Kawashima argued that the Japanese legal consciousness caused the smallvolume of litigation, whether the general social attitudes would be really determinants of legal behaviour in the context of civil disputes has been a majour issue hotly debated among Japanese legal sociologists and foreign scholars of Japanese studies. Drawing upon findigns of a nationwide survey, theDisputing Behavior Survey conducted as a part of the Civil Justice ResearchProject in Japan in 2005, we ran logistic regression analyses to see what variables would correlate behaviour in each stage of disputing, from experience ofa legal problem to bringing a lawsuit to the court. We found that general attitudes variables appeared significantly to correlate experience of a legal problem, but its substantive effect is very small. As the disputing stage advances,the effect of general attitudes diminishes, indicating that the general attitudesare not significant determinants of disputing behaviour. Rather, the type oflegal problem significantly correlates behaviour in every stage of disputingbehaviour. Also, past experience of using a lawyer and personal connectionwith a legal professional appear to correlate with seeking legal advice and retaining a lawyer. Few socio-economic variables facilitate seeking legal adviceor retaining a lawyer. Curiously, past experience of using the court correlatesmuch stronger with complaint to conciliation at the court than bringing a lawsuit to the court, while seeking legal advice correlates much more stronglywith litigation than conciliation. Although the exact effects of general attitudes cannot be measured because the data were taken from the cross-sectional survey, the findings indicate that general attitudes do not affect disputingbehaviour significantly as Kawashima and others argued.

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