Histories of international legal theories in Japan

This volume offers the first systematic account of Japanese international legal theory, tracing more than a century of scholarship across thirteen influential thinkers. Edited by leading Japanese scholars, it examines how theorists working outside international law’s Western centre developed sophisticated frameworks to navigate tensions between Western modernity and their own legal and intellectual traditions. The book’s central contribution proposes “conversation”—a mode of sustained engagement that respects irreducible differences between legal cultures—as an alternative to “dialogue,” which often reinforces hierarchy by presuming full reconciliation of perspectives. Through detailed intellectual biographies spanning six historical periods, contributors show how Japanese scholars strategically adopted legal positivism, articulated transcivilizational approaches, and advanced concepts of normative multilateralism. Aimed at scholars of international law, legal theory, and comparative traditions, the volume demonstrates that the field’s future depends on genuinely reciprocal, coexisting perspectives.