Lovesick Japan

In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence--2,700 court opinions--describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation.

Sometimes judges' views about love, sex, and marriage emerge from their presentation of the facts of cases. Among the recurring elements are abortions forced by men, compensated dating, late-life divorces, termination fees to end affairs, sexless couples, Valentine's Day heartbreak, soapland bath-brothels, and home-wrecking hostesses.

Sometimes the judges' analysis, decisions, and commentary are as revealing as the facts. Sex in the cases is a choice among private normal sex, which is male-dominated, conservative, dispassionate, or nonexistent; commercial sex, which caters to every fetish but is said to lead to rape, murder, and general social depravity; and a hybrid of the two, which commodifies private sexual relationships. Marriage is contractual; judges express the ideal of love in marriage and proclaim its importance, but virtually no one in the court cases achieves it. Love usually appears as a tragic, overwhelming emotion associated with jealousy, suffering, heartache, and death.

Exploring the legal perspective on love, sex, and marriage--and their complications--in contemporary Japan.

Mark D. West is Nippon Life Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan Law School. He is the author of Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rules of Scandal in Japan and the United States and Law in Everyday Japan: Sumo, Suicide, Sex, and Statutes and the coauthor of The Japanese Legal System and Economic Organizations and Corporate Governance in Japan.

Nobody else explores the law in Japan quite like Mark West, bringing it to life and close to home. Lovesick Japan is an entertaining and insightful examination of the courts, pulling eye-popping gems from judges' opinions that speak volumes about their proclivity for peeping, prodding, moralizing and otherwise creeping into the bedroom in adjudicating marriage, divorce, rape, stalking and pornography.... But there is much more to Lovesick Japan than a series of absurd rulings; here we are shown how sermonizing judges try to shape society in their own image.... Often they go well beyond the law to decide cases based on nonfactual, subjective elements, sometimes with unfortunate consequences.

--Jeff Kingston "Japan Times"

Tranquil, according to Mark D. West, Japanese love is not. Happy it is not. And comforting it is not.... A prolific and brilliant legal scholar, West draws these conclusions from Japanese court opinions. Some of them concern criminal prosecutions for rape or murder. Others involve civil suits for divorce or damages. West carefully and thoughtfully combs these opinions for discussions of love, sex, marriage, and romance, teasing out what judges think about it all.... West reads these court opinions with care and intelligence (with, frankly, extraordinary care and intelligence).

--J. Mark Ramseyer "Monumenta Nipponica"