This handbook volume traces the development of Japan's feudal legal system into that of a modern type of a state, covering the period from the beginning of modernization in1886 to the end of the Pacific War, and, beyond that, the period of reorientation (1945-1950) and thereafter. Each author follows closely the development of a main branch of the legal system, describing the path of a legal institution progressing through a semi-feudalistic period, the introduction of western views, as well as the coexistence and mixture of essentially Japanese and European or American notions at the same...