The difference between Old Japan and New Japan is quite clearly evident when one comes to the study of law and jurisprudence. It would be very misleading to affirm that the administration of justice was a farce; and yet so-called legal decisions were too often arbitrary and tyrannical. The feudal lords were too much inclined to visit summary and cruel punishment on slight pretext; and altogether too few were the men like Oöka, the justice and wisdom of whose decisions won for him the title of “Japanese Solomon.” As a matter of fact, there was in Old Japan, as Wigmore has abundantly shown,[115] “a legal system, a body of clear and consistent rules, a collection of statutes and of binding precedents.” The chief characteristics of Japanese justice under the old _régime_, as indicated by Wigmore, were the following: (1) Making justice “personal, not impersonal,” by balancing “the benefits and disadvantages of a given course, not for all time in a fixed rule, but anew in each instance,” and thus “to sacrifice legal principle to present expediency”; (2) the feudal spirit, especially in criminal law, as illustrated by the use of torture, humiliating forms of procedure, and awfully severe punishments; and (3) the attainment of justice, “not so much by the aid of the law as by mutual consent,” by means of definite customs, applied, however, “through arbitration and concession,” so that there was “a universal resort to arbitration and compromise as a primary means of settling disputes,” and only a _dernier ressort_ to the process of law. These characteristics should be noticed, not merely on account of their historical value, but in explanation of certain traits still prominent even in New Japan. But Modern Japan is pretty well equipped with a system of new codes, based on European models, yet showing some modifications to suit Japan’s peculiar needs. This codification along Western lines was strongly opposed by the conservatives, who insisted that national codes, “interpreting national needs,” should be naturally developed in due course of time. But this opposition was overcome by the demands for treaty revision and the recognition of Japan in the comity of nations; for Occidental powers would not remove their extra-territorial jurisdiction and leave their nationals to the mercy of Japanese courts, unless the laws were codified according to Western models. A list of the new codes is taken, with slight modifications, from Chamberlain’s “Things Japanese,” which has been especially helpful in the preparation of this chapter.