Thus, although Japan early adopted a version of the German Civil Code, it did not adopt the Germans’ strong consciousness of legal rights. In many areas of Japanese life, it is still difficult to predict whether a dispute will be settled under legal standards, and it is often impossible to know whether a person will enforce those rights that are legally available to him. The concepts pervasive in Western law—that the legal consequences of a particular conduct should be predictable before the conduct has occurred, that in any dispute the courts should give full effect to claims (a plaintiff receiving all or nothing), and that individual disputes should be resolved without considering the parties’ social and economic background—have not penetrated deeply into Japanese law. In contrast, facilities for conciliation are used to promote adjustment in terms of nonlegal considerations; local police stations provide conciliation rooms, and elders act as go-betweens. Compromise based on legally irrelevant considerations is encouraged, and disputes are often resolved by techniques that fall outside formal law.