374 COMPARATIVE LAW 



languages, besides international treaties which have reference to the 

 rules of private law. They accordingly collected more than thirty 

 civil codes, including many drafts, such as the draft of the Civil 

 Code of New York, the draft of the German Code, the drafts of the 

 Belgian Code, besides other codes, statutes, reports, and treaties, and 

 comparing the rules or principles which exist in different countries, 

 adopted whatever seemed to be best suited to the requirements 

 of the country. In the original draft which was submitted to the 

 deliberation of the committee, an explanation was attached to each 

 article, stating the reasons for the adoption of the rule. The corre- 

 sponding articles or rules which exist in other countries, as well as 

 rules, precedents, and customs in our own country, were also cited 

 for the consideration of the committee. This method of preparing 

 the draft gave a characteristic feature to the new code. The Japanese 

 Civil Code may be said to be a fruit of comparative jurisprudence. 

 At first sight, it may appear that the new code was very closely 

 modeled upon the new German Civil Code; and I have very often 

 read statements to that effect. It is true that the first and second 

 draft of the German Code furnished very valuable material to the 

 drafting committee and had a great influence upon the deliberations 

 of the committee. But on close examination of the principles and 

 rules adopted in the Code, it will appear that they gathered materials 

 from all parts of the civilized world and freely adopted rules or 

 principles from the laws of any country, whenever they saw the 

 advantage o'f doing so. In some parts, rules were adopted from the 

 French Civil Code; in others, the principles of English common law 

 were followed; in others, again, such laws as the Swiss Federal Code 

 of Obligations of 1881, the new Spanish Civil Code of 1889, the 

 Property Code of Montenegro, Indian Succession and Contract Acts, 

 or the Civil Codes of Louisiana, Lower Canada, or the South American 

 republics, or the revised Civil Code of New York, and the like gave 

 material to the framers of the Code. In January, 1896, the report of 

 the Committee on book i, "General Provisions," book n, "Rights 

 in rent," and book in, " Rights in personam," was submitted to the 

 Imperial Diet and was adopted with only a few unimportant modi- 

 fications. In April of the same year, these three books were pro- 

 mulgated as Law no. 89. The remaining two books on "Family" 

 and "Succession" were submitted to the Imperial Diet in May, 1898, 

 and adopted by both Houses with only slight modifications, and were 

 promulgated as Law no. 90 in June; and the whole Code came into 

 force on the 16th of July, 1898. 



The foregoing sketch, brief as it is, of the history of the codification 

 of the civil law will be sufficient to show that the new Japanese Civil 

 Code is the result of the comparative study of laws, and offers in its 

 turn valuable materials for the study of comparative jurisprudence. 



