In an increasingly global business environment, both firms and their lawyers are having to be aware of legal systems beyond their own. Most United Kingdom lawyers involved with international trade and competition law would doubtless feel confident in dealing with European Community law and, to a lesser extent, with the laws of its constituent Member States. As the law of the second of the world’s major trading blocs is based on common law principles, issues of both United States federal and state law hold few terrors, at least in theory, if not always in practice. By contrast, Japanese law is not widely studied or disseminated in the U.K. despite the importance of Japan as the third major trading bloc in world trade. This book, part of Oxford University Press’ Modern Japanese Law series, meets a need for a clear introduction for both practising and academic lawyers to the principles of both Japanese trade and competition law. It deserves to be widely read on Law School courses in these areas: it will undoubtedly be widely used by practitioners.

Professor Matsushita divides his book into four principal parts. There is also a highly useful Preface, which briefly sketches the history of modern Japan, demonstrating how its legal system developed as a hybrid, using continental European codes (particularly the French and German) on top of an American style Constitution combined with a distinctively Japanese approach to extra-legal dispute settlement. An Appendix provides a translation of Japan’s Anti-Monopoly Law.

The first part of the book sets out the legal framework of Government Regulation of Business, first describing the Japanese legislative and judicial systems and then going on to explain how constitutional protection of business activities applies. Of particular current interest is the explanation of the effect of GATT in Japanese law and whether provisions of GATT can override inconsistent domestic law. This was examined in the saga of the Kyoto Necktie case, culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision, handed down in February 1990, affirming the decisions of the Osaka High Court and Kyoto District Court that, although domestic law might conflict with GATT, the only remedy was dispute resolution under the provisions of GATT, not a refusal to give effect to Japanese law. As Matsushita comments, this is inconsistent with Japanese legal doctrine, which holds that treaties are given effect under domestic law and can override inconsistent law. He notes that the Japanese courts have never actually applied this doctrine to overrule a national law. Given the growing importance of GATT following the largely successful conclusion of the Uruguay round, it may well be that lawyers for firms denied access to Japanese markets contrary to GATT will