Contact of the Common Law with the Civil Law in Japan

Abstract

A CANDIDATE FOR A LAW DEGREE at the University of Tokyo must take courses in English, French, or German law, besides duly prosecuting his required studies in domestic law. This system of compulsory courses in foreign law goes back to the year 1887, when the law college of the same University was reorganized into four sections: English Law, French Law, German Law, and Political Science. Those were the days when the study of law meant virtually a study of west-European law. Before this reform, the Kaisei Gakko, from which Tokyo University emerged, had been teaching English law since 1874. Two years earlier a law school was started by the Department of Justice where French law was taught. Among private law schools, some taught English law, while others taught French law. There was, however, no school teaching German law. The Japanese lawyers, therefore, came to be sharply divided into two antagonistic camps-the French and English schools. The most prominent foreign teacher of the French school was Gustave Emile Boissonade de Fontarabie who stayed in Japan from 1873 to 1895 and lectured at the Justice Department School of Law on natural law, criminal law, and various topics of the Civil Code. The most eminent scholar of the English school was an American, Professor Henry T. Terry, who came to Japan in 1877 and devoted the major part of his life to the study and teaching of common law at Tokyo University (1877-1884; 1894-1912). It may also be mentioned that a Member of our Academy, the late John H. Wigmore, then a young man fresh from the Harvard Law School, came to Japan in 1889 and taught Anglo-American law at a private school called Keio Gijuku (1889-1892). The Japanese scholars who studied in England taught