try where the laws are comparatively uniform and equally developed in all parts of the country it is more a question of form and arrangement; but even then, codification means changes of substance as well as of form. For example, the Negotiable Instruments Law framed and recommended by the Commissioners in 1896 contains a large number of changes of the law of bills and notes; while, as was the case in France when the country was divided into two parts, one of which was chiefly governed by the Roman Law and the other by unwritten laws and customs having the force of law, codification was equally a question of form and of substance. So also, and more emphatically in Japan, where the country, formerly divided into numerous Dymioates, was brought under the direct control of a supreme central government; and where a nation, previously contentedly leading a self-contained peaceful Asiatic existence, with little or no knowledge of the outside world, was suddenly brought into contact with Western nations and was aroused, as it were, from its lethargy and obliged to prepare itself to enter into the family of nations, codification of the laws was more a question of substance than of form.
The work of codification in Japan dates as far back as the third year of Meiji (1870) when a Bureau was established for the investigation of institutions. In 1878 a draft was submitted by the bureau to the Government, but this was not adopted. In 1880 Prof. Boissonade, an eminent French jurist then in the service of the Japanese Government, was asked to make a new draft. The next year he completed his work which was submitted to a committee of gentlemen composed of members of the Genroin (the only deliberative council then existing, its members being appointed by the Emperor) and of the Bench. The committee made their report in 1888 and it was sent to the Genroin. The report was approved by that Council and on the 27th of March, 1890, under Act 28, Book II, “Property in General;” Book III, “The Means by which Property is Acquired;” Book IV, “Security of Rights in personam;” and Book V, “Evidence and Prescription,” were published. It is well to observe that these laws were based on the project submitted by Prof. Boissonade, while the remaining portions of the Code were drafted exclusively by Japanese jurists. In October of the same year, under Act 98, Book I, “Persons,” and the “Law of Succession,” which was to form a part of Book III, were published and the whole of the Code thus completed was to go into operation from the first day of January, 1893. Upon its publication the Code became a topic of earnest and sincere discussion. Public opinion differed widely.
