Seventeen-article constitution

The 17- Article Constitution (Japanese十七 条 宪法, Jūshichijō kenpō ) is regarded as the first constitutional document of Japan. Prince Shōtoku is said to have written the text in the year 604. It is a relationship of Confucian and Buddhist ideas treatise on the nature of the just rule. The text is now only out of drafted over a hundred years after his alleged emergence chronicle Nihon Shoki (720 ) is known. In particular, because of Article 12, which was the office of Kokushi mentioned that until the beginning of the 8th century introduced, it is doubtful that it is the original text of Shotoku Taishi.

The text in translation

Meaning of the text

The 17 -article constitution is no constitution in today's constitutional sense. Rather, it is a Buddhist and Confucian -influenced ideals philosophical work. It deals with reflections on the morality of the rulers and the ruled. Nevertheless, these considerations have become the root of concrete political action. The Taika reforms of 646 centralized power in fact the emperor who ruled a centralized bureaucratic state. With the Taiho - enactments and the proposals for the creation of laws and the obligation to provide forced labor for the emperor, were codified. The work requiring subjects of the emperor built, for example the Great Buddha of Nara. The conscript army of the Nara period was a service of the subjects at the Kaiser.

Significantly, called the text as origins of government ideas the old times and thus obscures their origin from China and Korea. In fact succeeded in Japan but never the establishment of a state that came close to the formulated ideal. The call to forgive offices in qualification, failed, unlike in China. The centralization of power to the emperor only survived into the early Heian period, before envy and resentment, scourged in the present text as a danger to the State, this ripped again. Until the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and Constitutional Emperor were thus again become politically insignificant. However, the thoughts of Confucianism influenced the caste system of the Edo period and codes of conduct as the house laws of the merchants or the Ehrvorschriften the Samurai ( Bushido ).

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