JAPANESE CIVIL CODE 387 



status and was excluded from the enjoyment or exercise of almost all 

 rights. 



But in the third period, during which European civilization has 

 been introduced, female education has spread throughout the coun- 

 try, Western jurisprudence has superseded Chinese, and Japanese law 

 has become a member of the European family of laws, a great 

 revolution has come over the social and legal position of woman. 

 This reform was consummated by the publication of the new Civil 

 Code. This code "created the new legal woman," as an able writer 

 on Japan has expressed it. (Clement's Modern Japan, ch. xiii.) It 

 proceeds upon the principle of equality of the sexes, and makes no 

 distinction between man and woman in their enjoyment and exercise 

 of private rights, so long as the woman remains single. She may now 

 become the head of a house, in which case all house-members, whether 

 male or female, even her husband when she is married, come 

 under her po\ver and are legally dependent upon her. She may exer- 

 cise parental authority over her own child, if her husband be dead. 

 She may adopt children either alone, when she is single or a widow, 

 or in conjunction with her husband, when married. She may make 

 any contract or acquire or dispose of property in her own name. In 

 short, she may be a party to any legal transaction, as long as she 

 remains feme sole. When she is married, her state of coverture obliges 

 her to obtain the permission of her husband in doing certain acts, 

 which may involve grave consequences upon their conjugal life; such 

 as contracting debt, acquisition or loss of immovables or valuable 

 movables, instituting legal proceedings, accepting or renouncing 

 succession, entering into contract of personal service, etc. Even in 

 regard to these acts, she cannot be considered as laboring under legal 

 incapacity, for when she does these acts without her husband's per- 

 mission, they are not void, but only voidable, that is, liable to be 

 annulled by* her husband. (Civil Code, art. 14.) With her husband's 

 permission she may also engage in business, in which case she is 

 considered in regard thereto as an independent person. (Civil Code, 

 art. 15.) That the Civil Code places husband and wife on an equal 

 footing, except when consideration for their common domestic life 

 requires some modifications, may be seen from the provision of 

 art. 17, which allows a wife to do the acts above mentioned without 

 the permission of her husband "when the interests of the husband 

 and wife conflict," and also from the provision of art. 790, in which 

 it is stipulated that " a husband and wife are mutually bound to 

 support and maintain each other." 



The great revolution in the legal position of woman which the new- 

 Civil Code brought about is nowhere so clearly seen as in its regula- 

 tions relating to the property of married women. 



The laws relating to married women's property are different in 



