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LEGAL JAPAN
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leave their nationals to the mercy of Japanese courts, unless the laws were codified according to Western models.

A list of the new codes is taken, with slight modifications, from Chamberlain's "Things Japanese," which has been especially helpful in the preparation of this chapter.

The new codes resulting from the legislative activity of the present reign are: (1) the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, drafted by Monsieur Boissonade, on the basis of the Code Napoleon, with modifications suggested by the old Japanese Criminal Law; these were published in 1880, and came into force in 1882; the Code of Criminal Procedure was, however, revised in 1890, in order that it might be uniform with the Code of Civil Procedure, according to the provisions of (2) the Law of the Organization of the Judicial Courts, promulgated in the month of February, 1890, and put into force on November 1 of the same year; (3) the Code of Civil Procedure, which went into effect at once; (4) the Civil Code, and (5) the Commercial Code, which were put into force in 1898; and (6) divers statutes on miscellaneous subjects.[1]

There are, according to the Japanese Criminal Code, three kinds of crimes, of two degrees, major

  1. ↑ These new codes are available in English, as follows: The Civil Code, by Gubbins; the Civil Code and the Commercial Code, by Lönholm and Terry; the Commercial Code, the Criminal Code, and the Code of Civil Procedure, in official translations.
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