Japan’s Magna Carta: Property, Inheritance and Gender in Medieval Japan

A Princeton Journeys Lecture by Thomas Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University.

In 1232, Japan’s first warrior government formalized the Jōei Code, which became the basis of Japanese law for centuries. After briefly comparing this code with the unrelated Magna Carta, this talk will analyze how this oft-amended code created a strong sense of judicial right, with particular focus on legal protections offered to women which were unprecedented at the time. Thereupon, the role of this code as becoming legal custom in later centuries will be explored, before alluding to the existence of strong land rights in Japan today. Register for the Zoom on alumni.princeton.edu. Thursday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m.