In April 2026, Professor Emeritus Takashi Araki of the University of Tokyo received the Medal with Purple Ribbon, one of Japan’s highest honors awarded for distinguished achievements in academia, the arts, and sports.1 He is the first labor law scholar to receive this distinction in more than 40 years. The award recognizes Professor Araki’s outstanding contributions as well as his leadership in shaping Japanese labor law and policy through his comparative labor law research. Professor Araki’s career illustrates three enduring functions of comparative labor law in Japan: understanding Japanese law through foreign legal experience; informing domestic legislation and policy; and bringing Japanese legal experience into international scholarly debate. His award therefore provides an occasion not only to honor an individual scholar, but also to reconsider the significance of the scholarly tradition that his work represents.
Japan is not part of a regional integration project like the European Union, nor does it face the same practical need for legal harmonization. Therefore, one might expect comparative law to attract less attention in Japan. In this post, I will briefly examine the background of comparative law research in Japan and offer some reflections.
Traditionally, it has been almost mandatory to conduct comparative law research in doctoral...
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