| With awarding Professor Dr. Koresuke Yamauchi the Thyssen-Humboldt Preis für internationale Wissenschafts- und Kulturvermittlung, the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung pays tribute to a luminous legal scholar, a charismatic law teacher, and a prominent comparativist who has built numerous academic bridges between the Japanese and the German as well as the European legal cultures.
For almost three decades, numerous Japanese and German law students, doctoral candidates, professors, judges and practitioners have benefited immeasurably from Koresuke Yamauchi's scholarship, knowledge, professionalism and friendship. They all value his fairmindedness, wealth of knowledge, his depth of analysis and his conceptual thinking. Professor Koresuke Yamauchi's passion for the study and teaching of the law runs deep. Among generations of law students, legions of fellow faculty members and his many friends and acquaintances in the Japanese and international legal communities, Koresuke Yamauchi's intellect and spirit are legendary. His respect for the uniqueness of each legal culture, his sensibility for the historical dimensions of the law, his broad-based comparative approach, his extraordinary wealth of knowledge, his analytical skills, his exceptional linguistic skills and, above all, his ability to listen, to observe and to contemplate have enabled him to bridge even fundamentally different legal cultures and to play an important academic role in the Japanese legal system. Not surprisingly, therefore, the impressive Festschrift Professor Koresuke Yamauchi received on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2006 is entitled "Japanischer Brückenbauer zum deutschen Rechtskreis". The title of, and the many contributions to, the Festschrift clearly illustrate the respect and admiration that both the editors and the authors have for Koresuke Yamauchi.
While he has written extensively on various facets of the law, Koresuke Yamauchi has made no secret of the fact that his true love has always lain with comparative business law and private international law. These fields have taken on a remarkable pluralism of theories, in Japan, in the European Union and beyond. Koresuke Yamauchi's contributions to these fields have been both constructive and profound. In his numerous books and law review articles as well as in his many lectures in Japan and Europe, Professor Yamauchi has repeatedly emphasized the decisive role and the increasing responsibility of the courts for the development of conflict-of-laws principles that lead to more predictability and stability. Professor Yamauchi has also studied extensively the impact of the law of the European Union and of international treaties on private international law and international business law.
During his stay in Germany, Professor Yamauchi will work closely with Professor Werner F. Ebke at Professor Ebke's Institute of German and European Company and Business Law in Heidelberg. Their mutual research project involves an extensive comparative study of the impact of the recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice on the conflict of corporate laws between the European Union and Japan. Professor Yamauchi will also use the opportunity to visit and work with his colleagues and peers at the universities of Münster, Würzburg, Basle and Lausanne.
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