Japanese Business Law in Western Languages: An Annotated Selective Bibliography (2nd ed, Hein)

[This is the Preface and Table of Contents manuscript for the 2nd edition, published in 2013 by Hein.]
The literature in Western languages on Japanese law, especially in English and German, continues to proliferate – despite, or perhaps because of, Japan’s economic slowdown after its own “asset bubble” burst in 1990. Law reform has been particularly intense and widespread in business law, necessitating this second edition updating for important works published over the last 15 years.
In 1998 Harald Baum and Luke Nottage published the first edition of their Annotated Selective Bibliography of Japanese Business Law in Western Languages, building on a chapter in Baum’s compendium on Japanese business law published in German in 1994. A new version of the latter published in 2011 included a chapter by Baum, Nottage and Markus Thier listing subsequent works on Japanese business law. That chapter provided the core for the updated references in the second edition of the Annotated Selective Bibliography, co-authored also by Joel Rheuben, but this adds many more references. We also regrouped various chapters and introduced new chapters for fields of law such as Legal Education, Environmental Law, Communications and Information Technology, Employee and University Inventions, Consumer Protection, Product Liability, and Medical Law.
The present edition of the Annotated Selective Bibliography further comprehensively updates the annotated introduction to general works related to Japanese law and the economy, including a completely rewritten guide to finding Japanese business law materials via the internet (for a much briefer version in 2009, see here). Below we set out the rest of the Preface & Acknowledgements, along with the Table of Contents. This second edition went to press in August 2012 and will be published by Hein in early 2013. There are also plans for an e-book version that links to journal articles for subscribers to the HeinOnline database.

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