Legal History of Japan
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The following pages are a brief survey of the legal history of Japan, from the beginning of its recorded history around the sixth century AD up to the present day. During that time, Japanese law, like other features of Japanese culture, has developed through a complex interplay of foreign and indigenous influences. Japan's first ideas of law were imported from China, but these concepts were later radically reshaped by a purely Japanese warrior ethos. In the nineteenth century, Japanese law was remade almost completely, drawing on Western primarily French and German concepts and institutions, though these were given a characteristically Japanese twist. After World War II, a new Japanese constitution was imposed by the Americans, and legal developments again merged a new foreign input with purely Japanese attitudes and characteristics. Japan's legal history is thus one of the most complex and remarkable in the world. In this regard, Japanese law is simply reflective of the Japanese experience as a whole. The history and the current status of Japan are both unique in the world. Historically, Japan is one of several civilizations which grew up independent of, but under the influence of, classical Chinese imperial civilization (other examples being Korea and Vietnam). Thus, Japanese civilization of the Heian period (roughly 500 1100 AD) was centered on the Imperial Court, which administered the country under a Confucian ideology and methodology which b
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tional law and procedures were swiftly supplanted by codes and courts based on European models.
By 1906, Japan had defeated Imperial Russia, one of the traditional European Great Powers, in a land and naval war, and Japan itself was accepted this at the very height of Western racism and imperialism as a Great Power in its own right. By 1945, following another war, it lay devastated and defeated. But today, as a glance at traffic on any American highway will attest, Japan is again one of the world's leading powers, a status upheld now by civilian industrial power rather than by battleships and warplanes. Throughout this extraordinary history of change and development, Japanese law has been the product of the struggle to adapt foreign ideas to Japanese values, and to adapt Japanese values to ever changing circumstances.
The history of Japan as a civilization cannot be traced further back than the early centuries AD. Japanese tradition goes back to c. 500 BC, but the early period is essentially legendary, still widely accepted in Japan, but not attested by physical remains or early documents.
By about AD 500, however, a literate high culture had emerged in Japan, taking shape originally under Chine
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Approximate Word count = 1266
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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