Tokugawa Translations of Dutch Legal Texts

Abstract

T HE formulation of Japanese legal codes modeled after those of the West in the relatively short span of years between 1868 and 1898 was doubtlessly facilitated by the prior accumulation of a degree of knowledge about Western law. Hitherto, however, research on the history of the reception of Western law in Japan has given little attention to the period before 1868, while discussions of the introduction of Western ideas during the Tokugawa period by and large have not addressed the issue of law, or have dealt with it only summarily. Yet, by virtue of its technical nature and specificity, the subject of law offers particular opportunities for exploring problems of cultural transmission and translation. Below I will seek to demonstrate this through consideration of a little-known episode in the early history of the translation of Western legal texts into Japanese. Mitsukuri Rinsho 0, fM# (1846-1897), a specialist in Western affairs charged by the government in the first years of Meiji with translating the French codes, complained about the difficulty of the task. He knew nothing about law, he pointed out, and found the meaning of many French legal terms, as well as the nature of legal reasoning, hard to understand. Even when he could grasp the meaning of the French terms, there was no Japanese vocabulary appropriate to convey them.' In fact, Rinsho could build on three decades of efforts to translate Western legal materials. In 1841, scholars of Dutch employed at the translation office attached to the Tenmondai )t,C the bakufu's astronomical observatory, had been ordered to translate Dutch law codes. Among those assigned to this project was Rinsho's grandfather, Mitsukuri Genpo Uf,Fcx (17991863). And when Rinsho started his work, there were already published translations of the notes taken in Leiden by Nishi Amane IN)N1 (1829-1897) and