The resurgence of interest in occupation law has lead to a considerable production of relevant books in recent years. Until recently, the student, practitioner or academic could resort only to a handful of sources devoted to military occupation, such as G Von Glahn's The Occupation of Enemy Territory: a Commentary on the Law and Practice of Belligerent Occupation (University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 1957) and E Benvenisti's The International Law of Occupation (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993) as well as the specific chapters of general international humanitarian law books. Takahashi's book is the most extensive in comparison to other recently published monographs on this subject, including the possibility of the regime applying in international territorial administrations. Also, unlike other writers, his background is closer to human rights law than humanitarian law.

This could explain the author's approach to occupation, which could be described, up to a point, as a human rights law approach: much is written in terms of rights of individuals, although it was not always self-evident that the body of humanitarian law accords individual rights; and the prospect of reparations in the event of violations still remain uncertain. However the current debate on the impact of human rights law in situations of armed conflict (broadly understood) could not but change any perception of occupation law as part of inter-State relations only.

This is not to suggest that the author does not treat the classic law of belligerent occupation. In fact almost the whole of Part I is devoted to an exposition of this body of law. Within this Part a chapter is devoted to cultural property in occupied territory and this constitutes, according to the author, a departure from existing literature. Part II is concerned with the fundamental guarantees for individuals in occupied territory through humanitarian law, including an interesting discussion of article 49 of the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Progressively human rights law occupies a more substantive part in the book and Part III examines in depth its interrelation with international humanitarian law. Chapter 20, on the procedural safeguards and judicial guarantees applicable in occupied territory, is especially useful as an almost exhaustive exposition of the corresponding rights. The same pattern could have been followed with regard to other rights (education, health, food and property), although this would expand the length of the book considerably and make it more difficult to carry and use. Yet this could be a suggestion for a future second edition of the book.

Despite the fact that human rights law forms a large part of the book, the author is cautious on the application of this legal regime in the context of armed conflicts. For example, he is critical of the ICRC's study of customary international human rights law (JM Henckaerts and L Doswald-Beck, Customary International Humanitarian Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005) for occasionally adopting the findings of human rights bodies without determining the ‘normative status and weight’ of these findings in general, as well as the defensibility of their positions with regard to derogable aspects of human rights in particular. His view is that the Martens clause, as part of general principles of law, could become the vehicle for transposing customary human rights law into the legal framework of armed conflicts, although he recognises its controversial juridical nature. The Clause had been used so far in order to pay lip-service to humanitarian law principles, as a limit to the general freedom of State action when international law is silent and, at best, as a means of customizing international humanitarian treaty rules. Consequently it appears quite ambitious to attribute such a wide-ranging function to it. Moreover the necessity of such exercise is questionable, since the subsidiary function of human rights law, in its relation with humanitarian law, and the extra-territorial applicability of customary human rights law are generally acceptable.

The importance of the book lies beyond the law of occupation, and the author assesses the relation between human rights and humanitarian law in a fascinating way (Chapter 17), deals with non-derogable human rights (Chapter 19) and discusses the extra-territorial application of human rights (Chapter 21). He also devotes a chapter on the outbreak of hostilities in occupied territories (Chapter 12) and another one on the right to life (Chapter 18). In fact he follows the current of authors envisaging the possibility that a non-international armed conflict could exist in occupied territories, even if one of the parties to the conflict is the occupying power. His approach in similar situations is that humanitarian law rules should apply to the extent that there is a corresponding necessity; otherwise a law-enforcement approach should be sufficient.

Overall the book is bound to find a significant place in international legal scholarship, even outside the law of occupation, since it is well and thoroughly researched.