Find a Mentor! And First, Master One Subject!

I teach Constitutional Law (General Principles and Human Rights) at Hiyoshi. Since it's a required course, if you enroll in the Department of Law, there's a 50% chance you'll take my class (laughs). Teaching a required law course for first-year students makes me feel like a club captain welcoming new members—it's very exciting and fun. At the same time, I am reminded each year of the great responsibility it entails. This is because the required first-year course is the students' 'first encounter with the world of law,' and whether this encounter is successful or not can determine their entire four years in the faculty. Whether they come to love or hate law depends on this first experience, so the responsibility of the instructor for a required course is immense.

The first doors you will knock on are the three fundamental laws: Civil Code, Criminal Code, and Constitutional Law. The Civil Code is a law with a European, particularly French, flavor. It is a major legal code that governs nearly every aspect of our daily lives, encompassing all things related to people and property.

The Criminal Code is the law concerning crime and punishment, and it deals with vivid, real-life cases. However, it dissects these issues with a rigorous and dispassionate German-style logic and philosophy that can overshadow the raw or gruesome nature of the cases. Undergraduate students who look for an uncompromising logic in law that keeps amateurs at bay usually end up liking criminal law.

Now, the Constitutional Law that I teach is 'the law that regulates politics and power.' To young people, politics and power may seem like a distant, abstract world, unfamiliar compared to the everyday matters of transactions and contracts, or the extraordinary ones of crime and punishment. In reality, however, both politics and power are dramatic phenomena with a deeply serious reality. Has there ever been a time when war and slaughter, like the tragedies in Ukraine and Palestine, were reported on so daily? Not a day goes by without political news about plutocracy or structural corruption. Even now in the 21st century, there are many people who are excluded from society, their dignity unrecognized.

Yes, Constitutional Law is an essential part of a liberal arts education for university students, helping them to understand that politics and power are real-world issues. Furthermore, for students who 'want to know the world and understand society,' another important role of a constitutional law class is to provide a framework for seeing through the complexities of the world and society.

Here is some advice for all of you. As we have seen, even among just the three subjects of Civil Code, Criminal Code, and Constitutional Law, each has its differences. However, as they are all part of the study of law, they also share many common elements. These include the importance of case law, a focus on the wording of legal articles, and the existence of a 'method' or 'form' (kata) known as the legal syllogism. These are the iron rules of law in general, and I hope you will master them, transcending the differences between subjects.

Therefore, let's first master one subject. Pick one subject—one that piques your interest, or one taught by a professor you like, for any reason at all—and commit to it thoroughly, taking detailed notes. You should find that you have acquired a method that is applicable to other subjects as well. In that sense, law is a discipline where all paths lead to the same destination, no matter which one you start from.