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TEXT 8. FOREIGN TRADE AND LAW IN EARLY JAPANESE HISTORY



 

Before the sixteenth century, the Japanese predominantly traded with the Chinese and Koreans. As early as 206 BC-214 AD (the Chinese Han Dynasty), if not earlier, Chinese civilisation spread to Korea and Japan. Many Chinese and Korean merchants and artisans immigrated to Japan at that time. Many more followed in the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-960 AD), whilst the Japanese merchants sailed to China to purchase copper coins, porcelain, incense, books, paintings, perfumes and medicines. In the seventh century, ritsuryo (legal codes) were developed on the basis of the Chinese Tang Code. In about the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Japanese forms of bills of exchange, called kaisen, saifu or warifu, were developed to facilitate commercial transactions. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese visited Japan, and more European countries followed. In the seventeenth century, Japanese merchants traded not only with Chinese and Europeans, but also with people in Southeast Asia and India. Commercial transactions in Japan then were largely conducted under customs. This situation remained unchanged until the 1890s when the Japanese laws were codified on the models of the French and German codes.

Certain fundamental changes took place in Japan in the nineteenth century. In the middle of last century, Western influence increased in Japan, following the making of a number of unequal treaties between Japan and the Western powers. In the 1860s, certain radical forces in Japan sought to improve the strength, or international status, of the country by staging a military coup, which led to the establishment of a new political system based on the highest authority of the Emperor (or alternatively, to the restoration of the Emperor's power). Japan opened its doors wide to Western culture and technology after the so-called restoration of the Emperor in 1868. By the end of the nineteenth century it had been transformed into a strong military force in Asia. Whilst it had to provide privileges to certain European countries and the United States under the unequal treaties imposed upon it, Japan had obtained special privileges from China through its military victories against the Chinese. In the early twentieth century, the Japanese took on the Russians in Manchuria (part of the northeast of China) and were granted concessions by the Russians as the result of the war. All these developments led to a new age of Japanese foreign trade.

Japanese international trade developed rapidly after 1869. For example, the total value of Japan's imports and exports in 1868 was 27 million yen, but in 1900 it reached a sum of 49.1 million yen. Although in 1897 the value of the exported domestic products per capita in Japan was fairly low (US$1.88 million), the total of exported domestic products by Japan in the same year was about US$80 million, higher than French exports (US$71.9 million) in the same year. Japanese exports were then concentrated mainly on silk, tea, rice, copper, textiles and artistic works. Between 1879 and 1899, the Japanese Government-owned bank, Yokohama Specie Bank established offices in New York, Liverpool, London, San Francisco, Shanghai and Tianjin (the last two are Chinese cities). This development not only facilitated Japanese imports and exports, but also gave the Japanese an opportunity to penetrate foreign financial markets. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese merchants traded with the English, Americans, Chinese, French, Germans, Indians, Koreans, people from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia and a number of European countries.

Japanese law governing foreign trade and commerce in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was affected by German, French and English law. The Japanese Commercial Code, which was initially formed in 1890, was drafted by Herman Roesler, the German adviser to the Japanese Government. The code is a combination of French and German law, thus initiating Japanese law into the family of continental law. Reflecting Japan's treaty obligations under the unequal treaties between Japan and the Western powers, the Japanese law dealing with trade and commerce was characterised by the special privileges and immunities of foreigners from the Western powers. Japanese domestic law was made or modified to comply with the treaties. For example, Japanese law in the late nineteenth century allowed a foreigner to hold mortgages on immovables, and a foreign juridical person to hold a mining licence, though a foreign natural person was not normally allowed to own land nor to hold a mining licence in Japan. Such arrangements encouraged the inflow of foreign capital, whose access to the Japanese market was granted in the treaties.

This brief review of the Japanese trade history may assist us in understanding the trading relationships between Japan and other countries today. Japan is a very important trading partner of Australia, and also one of the largest foreign investors in Australia. The legal issues surrounding trade between Australia and Japan must also be appreciated in the light of the historical, cultural and economic differences between the countries.

 







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