In the 1989 Oscar-nominated fantasy-drama film "Field of Dreams," the main character, a farmer played by Kevin Costner, heard a voice that kept whispering the phrase "If you build it, he will come." The Voice urged Costner's character to take a leap of faith and build a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.

It would seem that about five years ago the Voice relocated from Iowa to Japan, where its refrain, "Build it, they will come," was heard by bureaucrats at the justice and education ministries, as well as by many universities, when they approved the opening of 68 (later to become 74) new law schools as part of legal education reform. The new system was pushed through in response to a 2001 Justice System Reform Council report that proclaimed the need for Japan to "create a justice system for the 21st century," in part to "internationalize the training of lawyers."

Fast-forward to today and you would be hard-pressed to hear anyone in Japan utter "internationalize" and "law school" in the same sentence. Instead, because of low bar exam pass rates, the word is that law schools are producing unqualified graduates.