Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/76

 statutes as heterogeneous as were the conditions of the various districts for which they were enacted. But inconvenience of that kind was averted by the theory that the letter of the law need not be formulated provided that its guiding principles were enunciated, and since legislative principles are tolerably uniform everywhere, Japanese local enactments do not exhibit so much diversity as might be anticipated. The "Seventeen Precepts" of the House of Asakura, the "Hundred Rules" of the Cho Sokabe Clan, the "Twenty-one Statutes" of the Hōjō, the "House Laws" of the Takeda Chief, the "Wall Writings" (Heki-sho) of the Uyesugi, and other bodies of feudal regulations, could be compiled into a whole without any serious clashing of sanctions or vetoes. Still each fief exercised the right of independent legislation, as was consistent with the autonomy it enjoyed in other respects. The Taikō, in pursuance of his project of national unification, contemplated re-enacting the ancient Taihō Code and making it universally applicable. But he died on the threshold of this reform, and the enactments issued over his own signature were evidently dictated by the immediate needs of the time rather than by any broad legislative principle. At first the Tokugawa Shōguns adopted the old method of making known the laws to those only that were required to enforce them. But the eighth Shōgun, Yoshimune (1716–1745), one of the most enlightened rulers ever possessed by