Legal History Review vol.69(2019)
Summaries of Articles


[ Articles ]

The labor organization of Ritsuryo system in Japan and Tang

By Kosuke KANBE
Key words : Tianshengling(天聖令 , the law of Song dynasty), the Taxation Statutes, restoration of Tang’s provision, The labor organization system of Japan(雇役), Annual corvee labor(歳役)

The purpose of this monograph is to explain the legal characteristic and historical significance of Koeki(雇役), the labor organization system under the Ritsuryo codes in ancient Japanese. With this view, the author try to compare Japanese Taxation Statutes(賦役令) with Tang, reconstructed from Tianshengling(天聖令, the law of Song dynasty).

In the Taxation Statutes of the Tang, the texts rerated labor organization system can be classified into two categories:budgeting and labor treatment. In Tang, annual corvee labor(歳役 saieki), which is one of the Complex of Taxes(課役), is organized by the fiscal management office Takushi(度支), similarly other Complex of Taxes.

Those Tang Taxation Statutes was fully adopted in Ancient Japan while replacing Saieki by Koeki, paying wage for collected citizen. In Japan before the Ritsuryo system, there is an traditional labor organization system Edachi(エダチ) that imposed local laborers to provide labor force by collecting local people. By introducing the Tang Taxation Statutes, it become able to collect labor force independently in a system.

On the other hand, several old way of Edachi is kept in the Taxation Statutes of Japan. In japan, labor force by Koeki is used for only con4 struction at the capital, not for the whole land like Saieki in Tang. Suppling food and helping sick person on the way to the capital for Koeki are left up to the local administrative officials (gunji 郡司). Furthermore, at the site of work, workers are led by gunji, their local leader.

In this way, by introducing the Tang Taxation Statutes, Japanese ritsuryo government aim to establish centralized labor organization, but there are many old factors from Edachi.


Corporation punishment in the Taisho Period: Focusing on the Reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure in 1922

By Takashi OZAWA
Key words : corporation punishment, corporate criminal liability, the code of criminal procedure (act75, 1922), the corporation’s legal status of a defendant

The Japanese Penal Code does not provide for the criminal sanctions on corporations out of deference to the academic objections to corporate criminal liability;on the contrary, the Code of Criminal Procedure expressly provides for corporation punishment since 1922. The purpose of this paper is to examine the legislative process of these provisions.

There are two sets of provisions for corporation punishment in the Code of Criminal Procedure (act 75, 1922):one is the provisions that admit the capacity of a juridical person to be a defendant (article 36, 38, 619);the other is the provisions concerning the liquidation of a juridical person (article 315, 365, 555). The former new rules were proposed in the first Draft 1913, because a large number of administrative laws provided the criminal sanctions on corporations under article 8 of the Penal Code.

In conclusion, the Japanese legislator established provisions for corporation punishment at the Code of Criminal Procedure 1922, in order to resolve the conflict between academic objections against corporate criminal liability and practical needs for corporation punishment. These new procedural rules are the first-time general provisions for corporation punishment in modern Japan. The most important key-clause of them is article 36, which supports the Japanese corporation punishment system, in spite of endless transformation of substantive criminal laws.


[ Symposium ]

Symposium Mixed Legal System and Legal History

By Emi MATSUMOTO, Yasunori KASAI, John W. CAIRNS, Thomas W. BENNETT, Kenichi MORIYA, Kozo OGAWA, Masayuki TAMARUYA, Kengo ITAMOCHI
Key words : Mixed legal system, Scotland, South Africa, Slavery, Ubuntu, Customary law

The aim of this symposium is to draw the attention of Japanese legal historians to the notion of the Mixed Legal System and suggest that the Japanese Law should be investigated from the point of view of the mixed legal system. Invited scholars are from Scotland and South Africa. It is important to compare Japan with those countries of mixed legal system with a view to what kind of mixture constitutes Japanese law. Scotland and South Africa have mixed systems of Continental Civil law (Roman law) and English Common law, which give us historical perspectives of the interaction between these two laws. In particular, the way of handling legal ideas and terms of the two different systems can also help in decribing Japanese legal history in English, with the notions of Common law.

The chosen topic at this symposium is ‘customary’ law because Japanese law has been taken as a mixture of Civil law and customary law. Professor John Cairns (Edinburgh) discusses “Custom and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Scotland”. He looks into the theory and practice facing the issue of slavery in the 18th century, with referrence to some important cases reaching Knight v. W edderburn in 1778. Professor Thomas Bennett (Cape Town) gives a paper entitled “Loan words and legal transplants:two frameworks for the analysis of ubuntu in South African law”. He introduces to us a fundamental idea of African origin, ubuntu, which is working in the mixed system of South Africa. Professor Kenichi Moriya and Professor Kozo Ogawa give comments on each paper respectively which have developed further discussion on relationships between custom and law.


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