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Japanese institutions, in spite of the debt they owe to China, a stamp peculiarly their own.
The subject seems to divide itself naturally into three parts:—The first is, the condition of society which is represented to us in these pages; the second, its nature and character considered as a code with illustrations from other systems of law; the third, its nature as a manual of suggestions bequeathed by Iyeyas to his successors. 1.—We shall first enquire into the state of society depicted by the Legacy of Iyeyas.[1] The following remarks are only a commentary and paraphrase on chapters 42 to 50 in this book. The basis of Japanese life then, as now, was the family. The Japanese family was a corporation. the most characteristic mark of which was its perpetuity. The Paterfamilias, head of the family, had a power similar, in nearly all respects, to the Paterfamilias at Rome. Like him, the Jtpanese Father had complete power over the persons and property of his children. He could do as he pleased with both, fettered only by that custom which is the great hindrance to despotism in all early communities. But if his rights were great, his liabilities were great also; he was responsible for all the ill-doings of any of his family. But the Japanese family was not what we understand by the word. It was often not natural but artificial. That is to say; persons whom we should exclude from the family were admitted into it; and those who would find a place in it were sometimes excluded from it. In other words, adoption on the one band, and emancipation or the sending away of a son from the family on the other, were in constant practice. Adoption in Japan, differed from that in Rome. In Rome adoption was resorted to for the purpose merely of enlarging the family: in Japan it was solely employed to perpetuate the family. A man with no male heir was allowed to adopt a child from another
- ↑ Every legal system tells us much of the past life of the nation for which it was framed, since laws are a natural product and not an artificial creation.
