mined more by distinction of personal status than by contracts arising out of the exercise of the free will of persons, and property, the kinds of which were few and phases less complicated, was comparatively less important, while the tendency of modern civilization is towards individual freedom, abolition of distinction of rights and privileges based upon difference of personal status, allowing each individual man or woman to determine his or her rights and duties by the exercise of his or her own free will. At the same time the growth of industry and commerce on a gigantic scale has given rise to various forms and modifications of proprietary rights unknown in past times. Hence, in the Saxon, the German, and the Japanese Codes, laws relating to property and obligations occupy the first and more important places, while laws relating to persons are relegated to secondary places.
Book I of the Japanese Code is specially devoted to general provisions common to all legal relations. This is an important deviation which finds its ample justification in the fact that the body of the law is thereby made succinct, repetitions are avoided and the work of the student is rendered easier. Laws relating to capacity, and domicile, which in the French Code come under “Des personnes,” laws relating to general legal acts which in the French Code occupy a place under the heading of contracts, but which in reality relate, not to contracts alone, but to all legal acts, and finally laws relating to prescription are in the Japanese Civil Code brought together in their proper places in this division of General Provisions.
Again in the French Code rights in rem and rights in personam are not logically classified, neither do they form distinct headings, while in the Japanese Code the logical classification is strictly followed. Those portions of Book III of the French Code, which treat of such as privileges and mortgages, together with a large portion of the subject matter of Book II of the same Code, form a distinct heading in Book II of our Code.
The laws relating to artificial or (as we prefer) juridical persons are not found in the French Code, but with the growth and development of corporations and associations in modern society, a civil code without rules relating to them would hardly be complete or responsive to the requirements of the times. The French Code contains provisions which relate to public law and also to procedure. These are wisely omitted from the Japanese Code.
