This book describes the state of the lay participation system in criminal justice, saiban-in seido, in Japanese society. Starting with descriptions of the outlines of lay participation in the Japanese criminal justice system, the book deals with the questions of what the lay participants think about the system after their participation, how the general public evaluate the system, whether the introduction of lay participation has promoted trust in the justice system in Japan, and the foci of Japanese societys interest in the lay participation system. To answer these questions, the author utilizes data obtained from social surveys of actual participants and of the general public. The book also explores the results of quantitative text analyses of newspaper articles. With those data, the author describes how Japanese society evaluates the implementation of the system and discusses whether the system promotes democratic values in Japan.

Masahiro Fujita is Professor of Social Psychology, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University. He received LL.B., LL.M., and Ph.D. in Law from the University of Tokyo and M.A. in Human System Sciences from Hokkaido University, both in Japan. He first specialized in Japanese criminal law, and then he proceeded to social psychology to integrate the viewpoints and methodology of jurisprudence and social psychology. He started to study the saiban-in system in 1999 when he was a master's course student at the time of the infancy of the system. He adopted the methods of experimental group decision making the study and social survey. While he was a Ph.D. student, he became an assistant professor at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan. After he completed his Ph.D. thesis, he expanded his research in the field of personality, trust, and "language and law."  After he moved to Kansai University as an associate professor at the Faculty of Sociology, he became a visiting scholar of the Center for the Study of Law& Society at the University of California, Berkeley on his sabbatical. He is an active member of the Law and Society Association in the United States, Japanese Society for Law and Psychology, Japanese Psychological Association, The Japanese Association of Sociology of Law and other related academic societies. He had been a member of the board of trustee of JSLP for nine years. He has been a member of editorial board of theJapanese Journal of  Law and Psychology.

1Introduction: Lay participation to criminal justice system in Japan.- Introduction of the system and the interest of this book.- About this part.- The general outline of Japanese criminal justice system.- The outline of the system, saiban-in system.- Is the Purpose of implementing the Saiban-in System to reflect the Sense of Citizens (Shimin-kankaku)? .- Saiban-in selection process.- The saiban-in system in practice.- Significant problems argued regarding the saiban-in system.- The Impact of Implementing the Saiban-in System.- Considerations on democratic moments of the saiban-in system: For futureresearch.- References.-2 Social attitudes towards lay participation system in Japan.- About this chapter.- On social survey conducted by the Courts, answered by the lay participants.- Questionnaire surveys conducted by the Supreme Court of Japan.- Purpose of this section.- The first kind of surveys: Ex-saiban-in surveys.- The second kind of surveys: General publics attitudes and opinions.- Relationships between the peoples attitudes towards participation into the justice system and peoples personalities.- Problems and Objectives.- About personality and social attitudes.- The first paper.- New data in this article.- References.-3 Whats in the deliberations.- The deliberation with status differences.- Deliberation with informational differences.-Deliberation style in the deliberations with status differences.- References.-4 Lay participation system and trust in the justice system.- Social survey on the relationships between general trust and the trust in the justice system.- The changes of the factors that determine trust in the justice system before and after the introduction of the saiban-in system.- References.-5 Lay participation system in the society: Newspaper text analyses over the evaluation of the system.- The matters of interest and their chronological changes in major newspapers.- Appendix: Coding Rules.- References.-6 General discussion over how the Japanese society thinks about the lay participation system.- The purpose of introduction and the state of the saiban-in system.- Social attitudes towards the saiban-in system.- Deliberations in the saiban-in system.- Impact on trust in the justice system.- Foci of media coverage.- Democratic values and popular base of the justice system.- Overall evaluation of the saiban-in system.- Remaining issues.- Satsuki Eda, reprise.- References.-Index. 

2019 Distinguished Book Award Honorable Mention awarded by the Asian Criminology Society

Winner of the JASL Book Prize for 2019 awarded by the Japanese Association of Sociology of Law