(Part 1, in case you missed it, was about companies.)

Anyway, there’s a provision in the Japanese Civil Code related to a certain class of contract (委任 “mandates,” in case you care). The article simply says:

This type of contract may be terminated at any time.

Looking this up in the unannotated English version, I was surprised at how simple it seemed to be. Hooray for civil law!

A little while later, I looked up the same article in the annotated Japanese version of the Code, a big honkin’ book which links each article of the code to relevant court cases that further define its meaning. Here’s what I found:

This type of contract may be terminated at any time.
- – -NOTES: (1) When the terminating party has entered the contract for profit, this Article does not apply. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Judicature, [some date in the 1910s I didn’t bother to write down]

My response was something like the 50’s TV Dad below:

Note to self: Save this picture; you’re going to want to use it in a PowerPoint someday.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2006 at 10:46 am and is filed under Japan, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.