Reflections on I just didn't do it, the lay judge system, and legal education in and out of Japan

Abstract

In 2007 the Academy Award winning director of Shall We Dance released his new film, a critique of the Japanese criminal justice system from a wrongful conviction perspective. In this article, I use the film as a vehicle to serve three disparate goals. First, I provide the first legal critique of the film, a genre of legal scholarship developing over the past 15 years. Second, I use the film to reflect on criminal justice reforms in Japan, in particular the introduction of the Lay Judge System (quasi-jury saiban-in seido) from 2009. Third, I critically ask whether use of film as a legal text assists or distracts from my primary pedagogical objectives in teaching comparative Japanese law. I conclude with a cautious recommendation of I Just Didn’t Do It as legal cinema, as a catalyst for reform of the Japanese criminal justice system and as an educational text.