Profile
Larry is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law.
He has served as a professor of the Meiji University law faculty and Omiya Law School and as a director of the Japan Civil Liberties Union, Information Clearinghouse Access Japan and Japan Focus: Asia-Pacific Journal.
His awards include an Abe Fellowship to study freedom of information practices at the National Security Bureau in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Confidential Information Classification Practices
2015 Tokyo
Acknowledgments
At Bookbreak with Jeff Kingston
2015 Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (Tokyo)
I have enjoyed the support of my family and many friends throughout my career. This began in study with Professor John O. Haley and other scholars at the University of Washington Law School. Haley is perhaps the most accomplished and influential scholar in Japanese law outside Japan’s shores. I earned my J.D. in 1979.
In Tokyo, JCLU lawyers and other Japanese activists explained the significance of government transparency, which led to various writings and study at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., with the support of an Abe Fellowship from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.
Insightful editors, including Jeff Kingston, Mark Selden, Laura Hein, and others inspired me to write and delivered invaluable input that enabled me to produce a range of writings. I will always owe special thanks to Dan Rosen for his thorough review of an early draft of my book, “Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience.” There are also many talented Japanese editors who polished my various essays and other Japanese writings. First among them is Okamoto Miki, my partner for life. Most of my writings are introduced elsewhere on this website.
I practiced law for about a decade in Tokyo and Seattle. In Tokyo, Miyatake Toshio was my first mentor. Harago Sanji showed immense generosity and opened my eyes to many mysteries of Japanese legal practice. Not long after my resumption of legal practice in Seattle in 1985, a great airliner crashed in Nagano taking the lives of more than five hundred. I worked on behalf of the plaintiffs in a suit filed in Municipal Court in Seattle for about five years. The brilliant leadership of Tokyo attorney Suzuki Isomi and his colleagues ultimately led to a resolution of their claims.
I am also grateful to the officers of the Frank Russell Company, especially Craig Ueland, who allowed me to work for that great company during the 1990s.
I hope to continue to write about Japanese law in English, doing my best to open a small window into the dramatic evolution of Japanese democracy.
Research themes
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Right to Know, Freedom of Information, and Open Government Laws
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Japan Constitution
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Comparative constitutions
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International Human Rights Law
Academic Positions
2010 – 2017
Professor, responsible to teach courses in American and international law, Faculty of Law, Meiji University, Japan
2008 – 2010
Visiting Professor, University of Washington Law School, Seattle, WA. USA (Garvey Schubert Visiting Professor of Asian Law)
2004 – 2009
Professor, responsible to teach courses in U.S. law and to co-direct the Legal Clinic in Freedom of Information at Omiya Law School, Japan
2003 – 2004
Abe Fellow, conducted research in open government law at the National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. (www.nsarchive.org) sponsored by the Center for Global Partnership (www.cgp.org)
2001 – 2003
Director, Temple University Law School Program in Japan and Associate Dean, Temple University Japan
1979 - 2001
Practiced law and worked in managerial positions in Seattle and Tokyo
Education
1979
J.D. (University of Washington Law School, 1979)
Publications
2022.11
“Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience -- Protest and Law During the Iraq War”
2017
“Chilling Effects on News Reporting in Japan’s ‘Anonymous Society’” (with Yasuomi Sawa) in Kingston (ed.), Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2017)
2016
Suppressing Free Speech in Japan – the Police Campaign of 2004, 23 Meiji Law Journal 25
“Nationalism and the Law – Japan’s Tale of Two Constitutions,” in Kingston (ed.), Asian Nationalisms Reconsidered (Routledge, 2016)
2015
“Japan’s Constitutional Past, Present and Possible Futures,” (with Colin P.A. Jones) in Allison and Baldwin (eds.) Japan: The Precarious Years Ahead (NYU Press, 2015)
“’Personal Information,’ Media Control, and Government Power – Legislative Battles in Japan, 1999-2003,” 22 Meiji Law Journal 9
2014
“Raising the Wall of Secrecy in Japan – the State Secrecy Law of 2013,” 21 Meiji Law Journal 13
2013
“Japan’s Judicial System Reform Council and the ‘Rule of Law’,” Journal of the Japanese Association of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 78
2011
“Law and Society,” in Bestor and Bestor (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society (Routledge)
“Reserved Seats on Japan’s Supreme Court,” Washington University Law Journal, Vol. 88
“Citizens: The Founders of Japan’s Freedom Information Movement,” Meiji Law Journal, Vol. 18
2010
“The 1949 Attorneys Law –Private Lawyers Gain Autonomy, Foreign Lawyers Find a New Path to the Bar, in Haley (ed.) Law and Practice in Postwar Japan: The Postwar Reforms and Their Influence (Blakemore Foundation and International House of Japan)
2008
“Mr. Madison in the 21st Century – The Global Diffusion of Freedom of Information Laws,” in Watanabe and McConnell (eds.) Soft Power in Action: National Assets in Japan and the United States (M.E. Sharpe)