After twenty years of assiduous labor the Code Commission submitted a draft of a Civil Code to the two Houses of Parliament in 1890, accompanied by the recommendation from the Bureau of Legislation that the draft might receive the parliamentary sanction in such a manner that it might be possible for it to be put in effect by the year 1893. As might have been expected from the personnel of the Commission, consisting, in its conception, of Mr. Yeto Shimpei and the eminent French jurist Prof. Boissonade, etc., the draft was a genuine French code, being almost a literal translation of the Code Napoleon in all its parts excepting the part dealing with the Law of Persons. The question may well be asked why it took the Commission twenty long years to produce this imitation draft code when we know that the draft of the Code Napoleon itself was completed within the short period of four months. The answer seems to be that the Commission spent almost this entire time in their efforts to reconcile the principles of the French Law of Persons with the Japanese laws and customs bearing on that subject. As has been the case with many other draft codes this draft Civil Code of Japan was destined to go into oblivion. As soon as it was submitted to the Parliament there ensued a most desperate fight against its adoption. As figuring most prominently among the champions of the opposition I may mention the names of Mr. Kazuo Hatoyama, the present Speaker of the House of Commons of the Imperial Japanese Parliament, and His Excellency Mr. Toru Hoshi, the present Japanese minister at Washington.[3] Inspired by these and other eminent jurists of the English school the entire bar was set against the adoption of the draft code. This was not a case of a bar accustomed to one set of rules and formulas opposing the adoption of a new code for fear that they might be compelled to learn a new set of rules and formulas. On the contrary, the bar was composed of men who had studied law as a science, and science for the sake of science. The spirit of their opposition was very plainly shown by the objections they raised against the code. They said:--"The draft Code was a blind imitation of a foreign Code which itself was far from being free from defects. It abounded in definitions, illustrations, and examples, and presented an appearance more becoming to a text-book of law than the Civil Code of a great nation. It went into too minute details and left too little room for voluntary development of jurisprudence. It incorporated, like the French Code, the law of evidence into the body of the Civil Code, which was totally at variance with the modern theory of evidence, being a failure on the part of the Commissioners to distinguish adjective from substantive law. It made too many innovations upon the Law of Persons hitherto obtaining in Japan. It changed the Family Law of the Japanese from the foundation, which was a gross disregard of