Page:The Civil code of Japan (IA cu31924069576704).pdf/9

The first draft of a Civil Code for Japan was drawn up by Mr. Boissonade de Fontarabie, a French jurist, and followed in the main the lines of the French law. But shortly before it was to go into effect a committee of revision was appointed, who instead of simply revising that draft made a wholly new Code modeled very closely upon the new German Civil Code and entirely different from Mr. Boissonade’s Code, which therefore never went into operation.

The authors of the present thoroughly modern and scientific Code are Messrs. Nobushige Hozumi, Masakasa Tomii and Kenjiro Ume, professors of law in the Imperial University of Tokyo.

The technical terms of the Civil Code are very often literal translations into Sinico-Japanese of the corresponding German words. This fact and the great difference in form, arrangement and terminology between the Japanese-German and the English law makes it often difficult to translate the Japanese words by proper technical equivalents in English. For the most part the same Japanese word has been translated whenever it occurs by the same English word, even at the cost of an occasional awkwardness of expression; but in a few cases it was impossible to follow this rule without impairing the clearness of the sentence.