The Center for Japanese Legal Studies is the first and only center of its kind in the United States.
Under the direction of Professor Curtis J. Milhaupt, the Center for Japanese Legal Studies strives to be the principal source of intellectual exchange between the legal professions of the United States and Japan.
Established in 1981, the Center sponsors and coordinates activities and programs to enhance understanding of Japanese law and legal institutions, including curriculum development; lectures, symposia and conferences; individual and collaborative research projects; and the placement of interested students in foreign research, study, and work positions. Students have participated extensively in the Center's research projects, in addition to pursuing their own.
The Center also works to expand Columbia's vernacular holdings in Japanese law. The Toshiba Library contains this country’s premier collection of Japanese law materials and is considered to be among the finest private collections of Japanese Law. In 2003, the collection was enhanced by a gift of the private collection of Itsuo Sonobe, a visiting scholar at the Law School in 1958, who served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Japan from 1989 to 1997. The Toshiba Library is tended by a full-time curator, Yukino Nakashima. The collection contains approximately 23,000 volumes of books and bound periodicals, more than 90 percent of which are in Japanese.
