Legal Pluralism in the Commons: The Case of Toyooka, Japan

This paper examines the role of law in contemporary commons revitalisation projects through a case study of satoyama restoration in Toyooka City, Japan. While research on Japanese commons has traditionally focused on common-pool resource governance (iriai), we argue that current revitalisation efforts are better understood as commoning, which foregrounds the relational and ongoing co-production of social and ecological life. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Toyooka City, we examine how legal norms emerge through interactions between local communities, the Oriental White Stork (Ciconia boyciana), and formal legal institutions. Our findings explore how customary practices, including stork-friendly farming and habitat restoration, might constitute emergent legal orders rooted in multispecies relationships, shared responsibilities, and situated environmental knowledge. These legal orders do not operate independently of state law but interact with national legislation and international conservation frameworks, including endangered species protection and the Ramsar Convention. Rather than supporting a binary distinction between customary and state law, the Toyooka case demonstrates the coexistence of multiple legal orders within commons governance. This meaningfully expands the discussion on the role of law in commoning scholarship, by moving beyond concepts, such as ‘commoners’ law’, to examine the dynamic interactions between customary, state, and international legal orders. In doing so, the paper contributes to debates on the legal dimensions of commons governance and demonstrates the value of ethnographic approaches for analysing the plural and more-than-human character of law in social-ecological systems.