The Story of “You” and “Me,” Society’s Smallest Units

Masamichi Harada

Third-year student

School of Law, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo

Society is constantly changing through each and every one of us. That is precisely why legal education is not about distant social issues; it is also about considering how “you” and “I” can live better lives.

I sincerely hope that this class will give high school students an opportunity to think about law and society as matters that concern them personally.

I am a law school student who aspires to become a school lawyer. Many legal professionals with a deep understanding of education, as well as teachers dedicated to legal education, have come before me. I, too, have learned a great deal from them.

Still, I personally want to remain deeply committed to the realities of the classroom. There are things about schools that you can never fully understand unless you actually stand at the front of a classroom and teach. I wanted to understand those realities firsthand—the reactions of students, the atmosphere in the classroom, the difficulty of keeping a lesson on track, and the concerns teachers wrestle with every day as they engage with their students.

That is why I obtained a teaching license during my undergraduate years. Even after entering law school, I have continued to teach as a part-time instructor at several combined junior and senior high schools in Tokyo. Continuing to place myself in the field of education while studying law is my own commitment as I seriously pursue the goal of becoming a school lawyer.

This academic year, I finally joined the long-established University of Tokyo Legal Education Seminar. In fact, I had wanted to participate for quite some time. However, conflicts with required courses had forced me to give up the opportunity until now. That is why I am especially delighted that, in my final year as a student at the University of Tokyo, a long-held wish has finally come true.

So, what exactly is “legal education”?

When people hear the term, some may imagine a class focused on memorizing legal provisions. But that is not what legal education aims to achieve.

In legal scholarship, legal education is described as “education that enables people who are not legal professionals to understand law, the judicial system, and the values that underpin them, and to acquire ways of thinking legally.”

That may sound somewhat difficult, but the important point is not simply to “know the law.” It is to think about why a particular rule exists.

Who is this rule intended to protect? When opinions and interests conflict, how can the issue be resolved fairly? Is a majority vote always the right answer? If there is a problem with an established rule, can we change it?

Engaging with questions like these lies at the heart of legal education.

From a teacher’s perspective, legal education is by no means a special or unusual type of class. Under Japan’s current national curriculum guidelines, learning about law is incorporated from elementary school through high school in ways appropriate to children’s stages of development.

At the elementary school level, students learn about familiar rules. In junior high school social studies, they consider trials, the judicial system, and ways of resolving conflicts. In high school civics, they address more abstract and complex issues, such as the rule of law and contracts.

And legal education is not limited to social studies or civics. Learning how to prevent consumer harm in home economics, for example, is also a form of legal education.

Even discussing classroom rules during homeroom activities can be a genuine form of legal education.

Schools are often described as a “microcosm of society.” A classroom brings together people with many different perspectives and personalities. What kinds of rules are needed so that everyone can live and learn together comfortably? If existing rules create problems, how should they be changed? When opinions conflict, how should people discuss their differences?

Thinking about these questions for yourself, discussing them with others, and creating or revising rules are all part of putting legal education into practice.

Legal education exists right alongside our everyday lives.

Up to this point, I have used the word “society” almost without thinking about it. Sociology of law, which we will explore together in this mock class, is an academic field that seeks to understand how law actually functions in real-world society and what kinds of challenges it faces.

So what, exactly, do we mean by “society”?

One way of understanding society is not as something that is simply and unilaterally regulated by state law, but as “a dynamic arena that possesses spontaneously generated norms—‘living law’—and is continually transformed through interaction with state law.”

Admittedly, that definition is not easy to grasp as it stands.

What I would especially like high school students to notice is the idea that society is understood as something that is “dynamic” and “constantly changing.”

Times change, and technology advances rapidly. Ways of working change, and the forms families take change as well. Since society changes along with them, it may seem only natural to describe society as constantly changing and dynamic.

But I would like you to take the idea one step further.

Society never changes “by itself.”

Someone changes it.

And who is that “someone”?

Ultimately, it is people. It is us.

In other words, the “individual”—the smallest unit of society—is what transforms society and makes it dynamic.

Legal education, therefore, is not simply a grand but somehow distant discussion about solving the problems of “society,” or of schools and classrooms as miniature versions of society.

It is about considering how the “individual,” the smallest unit of society—in other words, “you” and “I”—can live happier lives.

If such discussions do not ultimately help “you” and “me,” the smallest units of society, to live happier lives, then there is still much room for improvement.

That is why we must continue through trial and error, again and again, building our discussions on reasoned arguments.

And the starting point for that process is your own sense that “this is a problem” or “things might be better if we did it this way.”

We designed this class in the hope that it might provide such a starting point, and that each of you will take something meaningful away from it.

That said, a class is a “living thing.” It cannot succeed without your active participation.

We are very much looking forward to meeting students from all over Japan on Zoom on the day of the class.

Finally, as a law school student, I have made it this far thanks to the support of many faculty and staff members, senior students, classmates, and junior students—people who have at times genuinely worried about me.

As a teacher, I have managed to keep going thanks entirely to the students I have taught, who have challenged me and helped me grow.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude.

References

• Atsushi Omura, Law and Education: An Introduction (Shoji Homu, 2010).

• Iwao Sato et al., Standard Sociology of Law (Kitaoji Shobo, 2022).

• Mami Kimura et al., The Law You Need to Know Before Becoming an Adult (Natsume-sha, 2022).

This article was originally published on the University of Tokyo Legal Education Seminar’s note page on July 16, 2026.