JAPANESE CIVIL CODE 415 



XIX. Conclusion 



I hope I have been able to show, to some extent at least, that the 

 new Japanese Civil Code furnishes valuable materials for students 

 of historical and comparative jurisprudence. The codification was 

 the result of the great political and social revolutions which took 

 place within a comparatively short period. The Code embodies in 

 itself archaic and modern elements on the one hand, and Eastern 

 and Western elements on the other. Within the past thirty years 

 Japanese law has passed from the Chinese family of law to the 

 European family; the notion of right was introduced; woman's 

 position was raised from a condition of total subjection to one of 

 equality with man, so far as private rights are concerned; the status 

 of foreigners advanced from the stage of enmity to that of equality 

 with citizens; the family system was greatly modified; the separate 

 property of house-members began to be recognized; and property 

 succession has come to exist side by side with the succession of house- 

 headship. 



Comparing the new Japanese Civil Code with Western codes, we 

 observe great similarity between them in the first three books 

 relating to general provisions, real rights, and obligations respect- 

 ively, but great difference in the last two, which relate to family and 

 succession. Of the first three books, the law of obligations may be 

 said to be entirely Occidental. That part of law may indeed be said 

 to be in a sense cosmopolitan, the laws of different countries exhibit- 

 ing a relatively small amount of variation in this regard. The law 

 of obligations, therefore, has the greatest propagating capacity and 

 is generally first received in other countries. Next comes the law 

 relating to movables. But land is usually so bound up with the public 

 policy and local conditions of a country that we usually find much 

 divergence in the laws relating to immovables in different countries. 

 The laws relating to succession and family, depending, as they do, 

 upon the national character, religion, history, traditions, and cus- 

 toms, show the least capacity for assimilation. So the usual order 

 of assimilation, or reception of foreign laws is, (1) law of obligation, 

 (2) law of movables, (3) law of immovables, (4) law of succession 

 and family. 



I have not touched upon those parts of the Civil Code which 

 relate to obligations and rights in rem, because the rules relating 

 to these parts are mostly derived from Western jurisprudence and 

 will present little that is novel to a European or American audience. 

 I have, confined my remarks, therefore, to those parts in which the 

 indigenous element is usually most persistent. I have shown that 

 even in these, we have made great reforms since the opening of the 

 jountry to foreign intercourse. During the last thirty years we have 



