At university I came to know the fascination of the law as a science, from the influence my civil law teacher, Professor Takeyoshi Kawashima. The approach of cutting up complicated matters into clearly understandable pieces was a stirring inspiration for me as a student. When I first thought of becoming an academic, I was in my third year of university. I could essentially have taken the bar exam, but thinking back on it now I probably didn't want to fail! So, I told everybody I would become an academic, and instead of sitting the bar exam I started working as an assistant at the university.

In fact, while doing my research at the university, I began to have doubts about whether the judges whose ranks I had aimed to join were really working towards social justice. However, I still remembered the freshness of looking at the law scientifically. From then, my direction changed towards exploring the knowledge of the law as a social science. This is how I finally decided to become an academic.

This is a slight digression, but there is an important reason for having 3-year phases in IGES research. I believe it is important to have a limited period to produce output and evaluate it, whether you think 3-year or 5-year periods are better. Assistants at my university had to write their thesis in three years, and by setting such a limit, one can grasp a certain meaning and achieve good things. If I too had had more time, perhaps I would not have written a good thesis. It's because of that that I think setting a time period is a good motivation.

Returning to the story, I started teaching at Nagoya University, and I was influenced enormously by Professor Kawashima's methodology. In 1966, having spent about five years teaching at university, I went to Harvard Law School as an international student on a Fulbright scholarship in order to study the law in earnest. In the debating chamber I was called on relentlessly for my opinions, so it was quite an education! At that time I believed that the law as knowledge had no meaning unless it played a useful role in society.

When I returned to Japan in 1968, pollution from unknown sources had become a major issue. It was exactly the time that the Yokkaichi pollution lawsuit began. I was specialising in torts, and went once a month to sit in on such trials. As I came to know the facts, it was obvious that the plaintiffs, some fishermen who had become ill, had no hope of winning in this case whose causal association was not clear from a medical point of view. I thought this was disgraceful, wondering if the law was really right here, and, thinking that I had to do something, I began to get involved on the plaintiffs' side. I was 31 at that time. So I became the advisor on the plaintiffs' legal team and developed the joint tort liability, with the result that we were able to win in a large air pollution lawsuit in Japan.