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THE LEGACY OF IYEYAS.
BY
W. E. GRIGSBY, Esq., B.A.
Of Balliol College, Oxford, and of the Inner Temple.
Professor of Law in the Imperial University of Yedo.
Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan,
at Yedo, on 30th June, 1875.
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Iyeyas, deified under the title of Gongen Sama, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, left, after a busy life spent first in attaining power and then in consolidating it, the treatise which forms the subject of this essay.[1] The translation used by me is that of Mr. Lowder, published at the beginning of last year. It has seemed to me that a few notes on it, with illustrations from the laws and customs of other nations, might be of some service in determining the place of Japan with respect to Comparative Law. The Legacy of Iyeyas is the most original monument which Japan has produced in the way of Legislation. Unlike the other Codes before the rise, and after the fall, of the Shogunate, it is purely native in its character, with scarcely any mixture of foreign elements. It contains the leading principles of the system which ruled Japan till a few years since, and it has given to the
- ↑ Doubts have been cast on the authenticity of this document by those competent to form a judgment; but as it is conceded that, if not the actual composition of Iyeyas, it yet embraces his policy, and is of historical value, the question of its authorship is of slight importance; I shall assume it is what it purposes to be.
