The Late Qing Dynasty Law Reform And Japan

Modern law reform is a very important segment of New Deal of late QingDynasty. The purpose is to set up modern law system and be in step with western lawsystem by compilation of modern law code. With various research, investigation aswell as consideration about lots of influencing factors, Qing government decided tofollow Japan to carry on legal revision. Therefore, Qing government recruited fourjurists from Japan with law compilation such of penal, civil, commercial and prison,which resulted to a role change—China changed from a teacher to a modest studentwho would like to implement reforms, while Japan became a teacher who would leadChina to the way of law modernization.The four jurists worked eight years in China which made profound and lastingeffect on China law modernization by the compilation of laws, the impartation of lawknowledge and the cultivation of law elites. Due to no civil and commercial lawexisted in ancient China; there was huge gap on penal and prison laws with Western.By referring to Japan laws compilation, Japanese jurists compiled the draft versions oflaw code so that they helped China track with world law development preliminarily.There are three sections in this paper. This paper begins with the exploration ofthe background that the four jurists visited China, which includes Qing government’sdecision of learning from Japan and the recruit of the four jurists. In the second part,there is a concrete introduction of the Japanese jurists’ achievement—theyparticipated in the compilation of laws, compiled the draft versions of law code andcultivated law elites. In the last part, there is an evaluation of the Japanese jurists’achievements in China—we endorse their work and discuss the effect Japan broughtfor late Qing Dynasty’s law reform.