Japan and Extraterritorial Criminal Jurisdiction

Chapter Four considers the exercise of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in Japan. We include a brief historical overview and introduce the constitutional landscape serving as backdrop to exercises of extraterritoriality. Legislation asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction is then considered, as is the approach of Japanese courts to extraterritorial jurisdiction. We conclude with observations, including that Japan has a strong reliance on the nationality principle and that Japanese courts seem to accept that jurisdictional claims can have primacy, but are not exclusive and therefore, can give rise to competing claims.