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CHAPTER XII

LEGAL JAPAN

Outline of Topics: Justice in Old Japan; new codes; list of same; crimes and punishments; convicts; police; arrest; trials; courts; judiciary; prisons; legalized prostitution; crusade against social evil; rescue homes, etc.—Registration.—Taxation.—Foreigners under Japanese law; restrictions upon them.—Leasing land.—Mines.—Railways.—Banking, insurance, etc.; kinds of corporations; foreign associations; Japanese corporations.—Foreigners in business.—Bibliography.

The difference between Old Japan and New Japan is quite clearly evident when one comes to the study of law and jurisprudence. It would be very misleading to affirm that the administration of justice was a farce; and yet so-called legal decisions were too often arbitrary and tyrannical. The feudal lords were too much inclined to visit summary and cruel punishment on slight pretext; and altogether too few were the men like Oöka, the justice and wisdom of whose decisions won for him the title of "Japanese Solomon." As a matter of fact, there was in Old Japan, as Wigmore has abundantly shown,[1] "a legal system, a body of clear and consistent rules, a collection of statutes and of binding precedents." The chief characteristics of

  1. ↑ See his voluminous work in Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xx., Supplement.
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