IN MEMORIAM PROF. A.A.G. PETERS (1936-1994)

On October 12 1994, Professor Anthonie Alexander Gijsbert Peters, member of
the Academic Committee of the IIAS and occupant of the part-time chair of
Law and Society in Japan at the Department of Japanese and Korean Studies
of Leiden University, passed away. Professor Peters had been ill since the
beginning of 1993.

By Paul Wijsman

Born in 1936, Professor Peters studied law at Leiden University, where he
was awarded his doctor's degree in 1966 for a thesis on intent and
culpability in criminal law (Opzet en schuld in het strafrecht). He then
worked for three years at the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute
for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders in Tokyo. Here he
developed a lasting interest in Japanese law, in particular with regard to
the question of how a legal system which was originally Western functions
in a traditional Eastern society. The next three years he occupied an
assistantship at the Center for the Study of Law and Society in Berkeley.
Upon his return to the Netherlands he was appointed professor of Criminal
Law at the University of Utrecht, a position which he held until 1975, when
he became professor of the Sociology of Law at the same university. This
last function offered him the opportunity to direct more of his attention
to the study of the role of law in Japanese society.
In 1984 Professor Peters started to give regular guest lectures on law and
society in Japan at Leiden University and in 1990 this university offered
him a part-time professorship in its Department of Japanese and Korean
studies. His last great achievement was the organization of a symposium on
the comparison of Dutch and Japanese law, held in Tokyo in the autumn of
1992, at which he brought together a number of the most prominent Dutch and
Japanese legal scholars.
It is particularly tragic that his fatal illness overtook him just when he
was about to realize what had become his greatest wish: to be able to
devote himself exclusively to the study and teaching of Japanese law. The
University of Amsterdam had offered him a full-time chair on Law and
Society in Japan, from February 1 1993. Under the circumstances, however,
he was no longer able to fulfil this position. Yet, until the very end he
continued to give his lectures in Utrecht as well as in Leiden.
Professor Peters will remain in our memories as an exceptionally inspired
and inspiring scholar and teacher. Thanks to his efforts the study of
Japanese law in the Netherlands has gained a momentum that it is not likely
to lose in the years to come.