SECTION C COMPARATIVE LAW 



[Hall 14, September 24, 3 p. TO.] 



CHAIRMAN: HONORABLE JACOB M. DICKINSON, Chicago. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR NOBUSHIGE HOZUMI, University of Tokio. 

 PROFESSOR ALFRED NERINCX, University of Louvain. 



THE NEW JAPANESE CIVIL CODE, AS MATERIAL FOR 

 THE STUDY OF COMPARATIVE JURISPRUDENCE 



BY NOBUSHIGE HOZUMI 



[Nobushige Hozumi, Professor of Law, Imperial University, Tokio, Japan, b. 

 July 11, 1855, Uwajima, Japan. Senior Middle Temple, London, scholarship 

 in Common and Criminal Law, 1878-79; Barrister-at-Law, Middle Temple, 

 England. Hogakuhakushi, LL.D. 1888; Dean of the Faculty of Law, Univer- 

 sity of Tokio, 1882-87, 1893-95; member of the House of Peers, 1890- 

 92; drafting member of the Committee of Codification, 1893 ; Chair- 

 man of the Assembly of Doctors of Law, 1899 ; member Tokio Academy 

 of Sciences. Author of Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law (in English); 

 Treatise on Codification; Treatise on Inkyo, or Retirement from House-Jieadship; 

 and On the Custom of Goringumi, or Five-men's Guilds (in Japanese) ; was one of 

 the three joint authors of the Civil Code of Japan.} 



IN responding to the call of the Committee of the Congress to 

 deliver a lecture on Comparative Law, I have, for reasons which will 

 not be far to seek, taken the new Japanese Civil Code as the subject 

 of my discourse. If, at the outset, I may be allowed to use a para- 

 doxical expression in characterizing that law-book, I should say that 

 "the East and the West, the Past and the Present, meet in the new 

 Japanese Civil Code." I mean that the codification of private law 

 in Japan was the result of the great political and social revolution 

 which followed the opening of the country and the introduction of 

 Western ideas; so that the Code embodies in itself both archaic 

 and modern elements on the one hand, and Oriental and Occidental 

 elements on the other. It is, so to speak, a connecting link between 

 the Past and the Present, between the East and the West, and stands 

 at the cross-roads of historical and comparative jurisprudence. 

 It is, on that account, peculiarly interesting to scientific jurists, as 

 supplying them with materials which few other systems can furnish. 

 It will be my endeavor, in this lecture, to show the effect which the 

 contact of the Western civilization with that of the East has pro- 

 duced on the civil law of the country, thereby illustrating some of 

 the leading principles of the evolution of law by reference to the 

 rules of the Code. The scope of my lecture being so wide, and the 



