''Kujikata Osadamegaki'' (公事方御定書, "book of rules for public officials") was a two-volume rulebook for

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese judicial bureaucrats during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

(江戸時代). It was enacted by Shōgun

Tokugawa Yoshimune was the eighth '' shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, ruling from 1716 until his abdication in 1745. He was the son of Tokugawa Mitsusada, the grandson of Tokugawa Yorinobu, and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lineage Yoshi ...

in 1742. The book was used to determine appropriate judgements and punishments by servants of the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominall ...

'' (大名), but these servants were not required to follow the guidelines of the ''Kujikata Osadamegaki''. Rather, they were bound to mete out fair justice only by the Japanese Confucian directive to serve one's ''daimyō'' well.

References

*Yosiyuki Noda (1976). ''Introduction to Japanese Law'', trans. and ed. by Anthony H. Angelo. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1976: 31–39. Legal history of Japan 1742 in law {{Japan-law-stub