Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/93

 punishment was only justifiable in the interests of the State. Of course so fine a theory could not be at once carried into practice; there were stages of progress. But from the first the statesmen of the era proposed to themselves nothing less than to substitute for the capricious laws and cruel procedure of their predecessors codes which should be in accord with the most advanced principles of Occidental jurisprudence. In pursuance of that purpose they despatched a commission to inspect the prisons in several of the British colonies, and they engaged an eminent French jurisconsult to work at the compilation of penal laws in association with a committee of Japanese experts. Such a wholesale importation of alien systems seemed almost reckless, and did indeed receive that epithet from some observers. But Japan was exceptionally untrammelled. Her one code, a collection of theoretical maxims and skeleton regulations, borrowed originally from China in the seventh and eighth centuries, had ceased to be effective after a brief period, and had lost even nominal validity after the establishment of military feudalism at the close of the twelfth century. Thenceforth until the days of Yoshimune (1716–1745) the nation remained without any knowledge of law, being required to study only the principles of public morality and to obey whatever instructions the governing class promulgated. But the principles of public morality being virtually the same every-