Yang Yifan (ed.), Selected Translations of Textual Researches by Japanese Scholars on Chinese Legal History, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2016.

This book contains a total of 59 articles of textual researches on Chinese legal history written by Japanese scholars. Among them, 50 have been included in the book Textual Researches on Chinese Legal History, published by China Social Sciences Press in 2003. The book is divided into 4 volumes according to historical periods, namely “Pre-Qin Period, Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty”, “Wei Dynasty, Jin Dynasty, Shui Dynasty, and Tang Dynasty”, “Song Dynsty, Liao Dynasty, Jin Dynasty, and Yuan Dynasty”, and “Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty”. Its content covers many fields of Chinese legal history, including laws expressed in different forms, the history of codification of laws, history of legal thought, legal study, the penal system, the trial system, case law, traditional official system, land and other economic systems, and marriage and family system. In terms of the use of historical materials, Japanese scholars attaches great importance not only to the detailed interpretation of classic law codes, but also to the search and study of legal documents written in the language of ethnic minorities, those inscribed on ancient bronze objects, bones, tortoise shells, bamboo slips, and stone tablets, contracts, and other records of on-site investigation; in terms of research method, this collection shows the following characteristics of writings by Japanese scholars: paying attention to micro-research, research on basic historical materials, and textual research, careful argumentation, and drawing conclusions on the whole through the observation of the part. As such, these writings are of very high academic quality and great value to Chinese scholars of legal history.