Kansai University

Kansai University was founded as Kansai Law School in November 1886, in the large commercial city of Osaka. Its founders consisted of a dozen people who were judicial officers and businesspersons.In the early 1870's, the Ministry of Justice established its own law school. Western legal concepts, including that of human rights, were introduced into Japan by distinguished foreign scholars engaged by the Ministry. The founders of Kansai Law School had studied at this law school, under the French jurist Boissonade de Fontarabie*1.The idea of individual rights and legal processes independent of central governmental control were new to Japan. Long after the conclusion of their study with Dr. Boissonade, the founders continued to feel that these concepts were vital to the new Japan. They saw it as their duty to popularize jurisprudence in order to spread throughout the nation two notions: that of an independent judiciary, and that of human rights.