Justice and International Law in Meiji Japan

Giorgio Fabio Colombo is Professor of Law at the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, where he is the Director of the Research Unit "Decolonizing Arbitration." He is also Visiting Professor of Japanese Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and Resident Research fellow of the Italian School of East Asian Studies (ISEAS).

'This important volume’s legal analysis of the Maria Luz Incident at a turning point in Japan’s (legal) history offers a rare and detailed window on the legal complexities at the dawn of modernity. A unique, nuanced and sophisticated study that will greatly contribute to understanding early Meiji Japan’s struggle with the practice of modern law and international image.'Professor Dimitri Vanoverbeke, The University of Tokyo'A unique and fascinating book on a founding stage of the Japanese legal system, largely forgotten nowadays. Giorgio Colombo brings to life in a picturesque way the event in which the Meiji government for the first time demonstrated its choice to turn to a legal system with the most advanced human values in the world.'Béatrice Jaluzot, Sciences-po Lyon, l’Institut d’Asie Orientale“Giorgio Fabio Colombo’s meticulously-researched monograph, Justice and International Law in Meiji Japan: The María Luz Incident and the Dawn of Modernity, masterfully chronicles a little-known yet momentous legal case that both reflected and advanced the dramatic transformations underway in Japan in the early 1870s. As Colombo cogently demonstrates through his lucid synthesis of archival materials and secondary analyses, the criminal prosecution and civil litigation sparked by the fate of Chinese laborers aboard the Peruvian ship “María Luz” warrant recognition as a seminal episode in Japanese and global legal history.”Shisong Jiang in African and Asian Studies, 2024, pp.1-3“Justice and International Law in in Meiji Japan by Giorgio Fabio Colombo is the first comprehensive legal analysis of the María Luz Incident (1872), a colourful episode in the history of early Meiji Japan. It offers a fresh look at the technical issues Japan faced as it embarked on transforming its legal system, in which rulers combined the functions of legislator and judge. This concise, understated book will appeal to students and scholars of Meiji Japan, comparative law and international dispute resolution….[it] is a valuable addition to scholarship dealing with the transformation of Japan’s legal system during the Meiji period.”Bill Mihalopoulos, International Journal of Asian Studies (2023), 1–3 doi:10.1017/S1479591423000414“Colombo’s book is a wonderful reference to study cultural exper[1]tise in the history and the evolution of international law. It is also an interesting work to understand the evolution of the culture of international law in Japan. The author must be congratulated for the thick narrative.”Nizamuddin Ahmad Siddiqui and Diya Rajput, Jindal Global Law Review https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-023-00207-x“This book deserves to be a standard treatise on the María Luz Incident. The trajectory of the book’s discussion of primary sources vividly depicts the transition from the traditional to a modern legal system in Meiji Japan, which turns the volume into an invaluable contribution to the literature on Japanese law and legal development.”Nobumichi Teramura, Journal of Japanese Law/Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht, n. 56, 2023, pp. 289-295

• Acknowledgement; 1. Introduction; 2. Background; 3. Criminal Proceedings; 4. Civil Proceedings; 5. International Dispute Resolution and Arbitration; 6. Conclusions – The legacy of the María Luz incident; Index