“Weird markets.” A friend suggested the phrase in 1991 over burnt coffee in one of those nouvelle-Italian restaurants that plagued the East Coast that year. “That's all you do, you know. Write about weird markets.” She had a point, I guess. And even if she had not thought the phrase a compliment, it did have a nice ring. It may have been a bit too cute to work as book title (I tried it, but prudent friends said no), but it does capture an important facet of this project.

If this is a book about weird markets, it is also a “law & economics” book about Japan. Solidly within the genre of positive (nonnormative) “law & economics,” it explains the relation between legal change and economic growth through a model of individuals who rationally maximize their utility (generally, wealth). Where most studies in law & economics either develop formally theoretical (mathematical) models or test theories with empirical data from the United States, however, this book uses data from Japanese history. It is data from a different world: For much of the period at stake, the Japanese government was an oligarchy rather than a democracy; the judges operated a civil rather than common law regime; the economy grew modestly but erratically; and social customs changed rapidly and radically. As a result, this book applies an economic logic, but to markets in a vastly different environment – to markets in a different historical period with a different political regime, a different legal system, and a different cultural context.