12 - The Birth of Criminology in Modern Japan

Summary

the beginnings of criminology

After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when feudalism was abolished, Japanese society underwent drastic changes during the Meiji period, which lasted from 1868 to 1912. The government reformed the legal system based on European models, paying particular attention to the French system. Various laws were enacted, including the Penal Code of 1880 and the Civil Code of 1896-98. Along with these legal reforms dealing with crime, a body of scientific thought appeared, first in the fields of criminal statistics and penology. At about the same time that the government began issuing official statistics on the incidence of criminal activities, legal scholars were being exposed to the statistical analysis of criminal behavior, mainly by Lambert A. J. Quetelet. Concurrently, penologists and physicians were engaged in efforts to reform the penitentiary system and to improve unsanitary prison conditions.

Because Japan had been established as a modern state by political and administrative reforms, particularly by the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution of 1889, jurists became aware of the importance of measures for defending the social order. During the last decade of the nineteenth century this included exposure to the theories of contemporary Italian and German criminologists.