| From the standpoint of Taiwan's legal development, a key characteristic of Japanese colonial law was that it simultaneously introduced Western law to the island. This study thus focuses on the Taiwanese reception of Western law under Japanese rule. It demonstrates the extent to which Taiwanese legal concepts diverted from Chinese legal tradition to modern Western law during the fifty-year colonial period.;In the late nineteenth century, Japan, with its experience of the Meiji legal reform, conquered Taiwan and began to "modernize" the law in Taiwanese society, a frontier settler society with a traditional Chinese legacy. Before 1922, only a few Japanese Westernized laws were enforced while Taiwanese customary law remained. However, after 1922, due to the colonial policy of the extension of mainland law, most Western-style Japanese laws were put into effect in Taiwan. Those Westernized laws in colonial legislation were effectively implemented by the modern judiciary in Taiwan and therefore gradually penetrated into Taiwanese society, although some colonial special institutions obstructed the spread of Western law. In criminal justice, Japanese colonialists established modern state authority by ruthless suppression of Taiwanese resistance, but also resolved the social disorder prevalent in Ch'ing Taiwan. During this process the general population had already been exposed to Western-style criminal institutions. These institutions were accepted because they represented state authority, not because they were presumed just. In Taiwanese civil justice, property law was largely transformed to modern Western law; however, status law was modified by Western legal ideas to a limited extent. Indeed the Japanese regime was a competent reformer in Taiwan's legal modernization. But the Taiwanese paid tremendous costs for the by-product of such Japanese-led legal reform. After Japan left Taiwan, the basic approach in this legal reform was maintained by the new-coming ROC regime, although the ROC officials brought in different methods of implementing the Western-style codes.;In conclusion, the Japanese legal reform allowed Taiwanese people to become familiar with the form of many Western legal institutions; but the fundamental spirit of modern Western law in protecting people from an arbitrary government and realizing justice was not yet generally known. |
