Page:Civil code of Japan compared with French (1902-04-01).pdf/3

298 thus appealing to the various occidental systems, they endeavored to eliminate those features of law which were accidental or merely historically important in particular countries, and selected the legal principles which might be said to be absolute and common to all. Of course all judges could not be expected to do this, but they were ably assisted by the researches of the advocates who now formed an influential body, a large number being well versed in jurisprudence. A system of jurisprudence would, in the course of time, have been developed in this manner in Japan, just as the Praetorian law was developed in Rome, but the immediate wants of society arising out of social, economical, and political revolutions had to be supplied and the need of a systematic and complete code was urgently felt and recognized.

The second cause that led to the adoption of the Civil Code was due to the earnest desire of the Japanese people to resume the civil and criminal jurisdiction over the subjects and citizens of the sixteen Treaty Powers of Europe and America. We had ceded such jurisdiction by our earlier treaties and a peculiar system termed “extra-territoriality,” — not of ambassadors and other privileged per- sons, but of missionaries, merchants and in some instances perhaps adventurers, — which existed only in the East, as for example in Turkey, China, Corea, etc., had been also established in Japan. Practically, as the number of European and American residents in Japan was very small, I do not think it worked any serious harm, but, as a matter of principle, it was strongly objectionable to the highly sensitive Japanese. In our several attempts to recover the ceded privilege we were met by the objection that our laws were incomplete. I do not myself think that this objection was tenable, since no one has a right to question the adequacy or the completeness of the laws of the country to which he resorts. But as I have stated before, actually our laws were not adequate to the exigencies of the time. Therefore, in the first draft of the treaty revision proposed by the Japanese Government, a clause was inserted to the effect that the Japanese Codes would be compiled and put in operation before the new treaties should go into effect. In the final draft, that is, in the existing treaties, this clause was not inserted in the body of the treaties, but official communications to the same purport were made by the Japanese Plenipotentiaries to the respective governments.

These are the two principal causes that led to the compilation and adoption of the Japanese Codes.

Codification is never a question of the form of the laws only. It is more or less a question of both form and substance. In a coun-