There are assembled here the Japanese (sorobun) originals and English translations of over fifty private agreements, mostly dating from the 19th century and selected from eighteen different villages scattered about the main island of Japan. Their subject matter has been classified into fifteen categories for convenience: water rights, land sales, boundary lines, commons, loans with or without interest, loans with or without various kinds of security, personal services, agreements concerning family relations (such as dowry, retirement, succession, sale-of-daughter, and prenuptial agreements), agreements concerning the headman’s selection and performance, inter-village agreements, dispute settlement agreements, and apology agreements. This volume will be of interest to historians, students of Japanese law, culture, and history, anthropologists, as well as anyone interested in Japan in the Edo period.

There are assembled here the Japanese (sorobun) originals and English translations of over fifty private agreements, mostly dating from the 19th century and selected from eighteen different villages scattered about the main island of Japan. Their subject matter has been classified into fifteen categories for convenience: water rights, land sales, boundary lines, commons, loans with or without interest, loans with or without various kinds of security, personal services, agreements concerning family relations (such as dowry, retirement, succession, sale-of-daughter, and prenuptial agreements), agreements concerning the headman�s selection and performance, inter-village agreements, dispute settlement agreements, and apology agreements. This volume will be of interest to historians, students of Japanese law, culture, and history, anthropologists, as well as anyone interested in Japan in the Edo period.

What is more, Japan's fishing villages played a significant role in Japan's economic development. In particular, during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), they acted as key commercial links between the castle towns and dispersed farming communities.

This book carries out a comprehensive analysis of the María Luz incident, a truly significant episode in Japanese and world history, from a legal perspective. In July 1872, the María Luz, a barque flying the Peruvian flag, carried Chinese indentured servants from Macau to Peru. After the ship stopped for repairs in Kanagawa Bay, a number of legal issues arose that were destined to change the perception and use of the law in Japan forever. The case had a tremendous impact on the collective imagination, both Japanese and international: it is one of the first occurrences in which an Asian country decided to resist the pressure of a Western nation, and responded using the most refined tools of domestic and international law. Moreover, the final outcome of the case (arbitration in front of the Czar of Russia) marks the debut of Japan on the stage of international arbitration. While historians have written widely on the subject, the legal importance of this event has been relatively neglected. This book uses the case to explore the technical legal issues Japan was facing in its transition from pre-modernity to modernity. These include unequal treaties, extraterritoriality clauses, the need to establish an updated judicial system, and a delicate balance between asserting sovereignty and resorting to diplomacy in solving disputes involving foreigners. Based on original documents, this book is an invaluable resource for researchers and academics in the fields of legal history, dispute resolution, international law, Japanese history and Asian studies.

Law’s Political Foundations explains the development of the two basic systems of public and private law and their historical transformations. Examining the historical development of law in China, Japan, Western Europe, and Hispanic America, Haley argues that law is a product, rather than a constitutive element, of political systems.

Four times in the nineteenth century, popular protest movements spread across the northern Japanese rice plain of Shonai. This study skillfully portrays the changing character of the protests, their relationship to one another, and their role in the societal transformation of Shonai first during Japan's shift from tributary polity to nation state and then from mercantilism to capitalism. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

First published in 1986. Western law is normally regarded as universal when considered from the fact that it has been received and utilized by non-Western countries as the basis of their own state legal systems. The reception of Western law by non-Western countries in modern times is the most influential encounter of non-Western law with foreign law. The major portion of this book is a collection of descriptions of typical non-Western countries from this viewpoint by native scholars.