The Legal System of Old yapan. successor; and being myself of the same opinion, I did so order. You also referred to the case be fore my predecessor of a debtor absconding pend ing trial, where the judge imposed hability on the successor and the Tribunal afterwards negatived this rule, and you suggested that as this rule did not seem just, I should bring the question before the full Tribunal. But I beg to remind you that what I consulted you about was not the case of an absconding pending a trial in my own court, but a case in which the defendant was in exile, and out of the jurisdiction of the Yedo Court, and we both had the same opinion about it. But as the matter of a debtor absconding during trial is somewhat different, and I have not yet made up my own mind about it, I think it better not to refer it to the full Tribunal until the case actually arises." 1 This whole record shows a method of de veloping the law not different in spirit from that of our own; and the last answer espe cially reveals the cautious and practical shrinking from the decision of more than is necessary which has always characterized the English judiciary. In a case which oc curred a few months after the preceding, in the full Tribunal, the very question just mentioned — the lapse of a claim against a debtor absconding during trial — did come up and was discussed at great length, and a number of precedents of all sorts were brought forward. The two cases, as the Magistrate said, might be very different, be cause the exile was civilly dead and a suc cessor was usually at hand, while the absconding debtor might return to the juris diction at any time and no legal successor yet existed. It must be remembered that in a society such as Japan knew in feudal times, local opinion, as well as the lack of free change of livelihood, made bankruptcy in most cases the end of a man's career. He might continue to subsist as a despised dependant on the charity of his friends and relatives; but he often preferred to cut loose from respectable society and join one of the 1 The manuscript collection of precedents from which this case is taken is a large one. covering the whole field of private law, nnd is now in process of translation, to ap pear, it is hoped, in a year or so.
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outcast classes. Thus it was that the courts were frequently called on to deal with the property of debtors who had absconded. The real development of Japanese juris prudence went on at Yedo, as has been said. But the proportion of cases in which a legal principle came into doubt was small in comparison with the mass of litigation, and the Yedo magistrate was above all a trial judge. The greatest fame was achieved by those magistrates who showed penetration in dis covering the truth and good sense in appor tioning practical justice. The traditions of the famous deeds of some of these great popular judges still linger in the nation, and especially among the townspeople of Yedo. The greatest judge upon the long list was Oka Tadasuke, whose name has been fairly canonized in judicial annals. He held the office of Town Magistrate from 1742 to 1751, and he is the hero of many tales, — not en tirely, it must be said, founded on fact. Some of his famous trials may be worth reproducing among the "Causes Célèbres" of this magazine. There is room here for only one brief incident in which he figures, — a story which is beyond doubt original to Japan in its present form, notwithstanding its remarkable resemblance to another cele brated judgment given more than two thou sand years previous on the other side of the world. About a century and a half ago, a woman who was acting as a servant in the house of a certain Baron had a little girl born to her. Finding it difficult to attend to the child properly while in service, she put it out to nurse in a neighboring village, and paid a fixed sum per month for its maintenance. N When the child reached the age of ten, the mother, having finished the term of her service, left the Baron's mansion. Being now her own mistress, and naturally wishing to have the child with her, she informed the woman who had it that she wanted the child. But the woman was reluc tant to part with her. The child was very intelli gent, and the foster-mother thought that she might get some money by hiring her out. So she refused
