lawrence m. friedman in interview They are all very interesting; interesting in their differences and interesting in their similarities. I do like to talk about Japan.23 I’ve been to Japan four, five times. I’m not a Japanese expert by any means, but I find Japan fascinating because it’s very modern and very rich. High per capita income, ultramodern in its products, and so on. And yet there is literature that kind of insists that the Japanese are really different, that this is a really different society. And my argument is, that it’s not. It’s my notion of convergence, that modern societies converge culturally and economically. When you go to Japan what strikes people immediately are the differences, not the similarities.Tourists go to Japan and say, ‘This is so different.’But then they think, ‘I need an aspirin.’ You go to a drugstore, to buy some aspirin, and it’s there. I mean, 99 per cent of what is there is the same as home. No one is wearing kimonos on the street. People are dressed inWestern clothing. Buildings have elevators, offices. People have computers. The kids are listening to rock ’n’ roll. It’s like this.Americans say Australians speak so differently.What they mean is that they speak English, and it is 99 per cent the same, but it’s the 1 per cent difference that strikes you. In Turkey, yes, it’s different – it’s a different language.But AustralianEnglish is the same language with some differences. A lot of people disagree with me about convergence; they think it’s nonsense. Still, I’m sure I’m right. Two hundred years ago the differences between societies were greater. But now they’re more alike. People wear wristwatches, they have smart phones, they drive cars. The rhythm 23 Lawrence M. Friedman, ‘Legal Culture and Family Law’, in Harry N. Scheiber & Laurent Mayali (eds.), Japanese Family Law in Comparative Perspective (Studies in Comparative Legal History; Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2009), 11–19; Lawrence M. Friedman, ‘Japanese Law in the Modern World’, in Tom Ginsburg & Harry N. Scheiber (eds.), The Japanese Legal System: An Era of Transition(Studies in Comparative Legal History; Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2012), 7–13. 119 tives, your language is filled with metaphors, which support not only your storytelling but also historical understanding. And you have travelled around the world, as a missionary so to speak. But is there any legal culture you have encountered over the decades that you have looked on as specially interesting?
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