2006 Volume 2006 Issue 56 Pages 41-64,en4
The present Japanese gazette (Kanpou) system is based on Aritomo Yamagata's Gazette Journal Plan (GJP), which was put into practice in 1883. However, before GJP, Sigenobu Ohkuma formed the Law Promul-gating Journal Project (LPJP), and got the Emperor's permission to put it into practice. When the coup d'etat occured in 1881, Ohkuma was dismissed and the LPJP vanished. Until quite recently the details of the LPJP could not be examined, because the archives concerned with the LPJP were missing after the coup d'etat. In 1992, these documents were found in storage at the National Archives. When the LPJP and the GJP are compared, it is clear that the GJP succeeded the LPJP and its identity is vividly alive in the context of the GJP. Through investigation and analysis into these documents, it can be said that the Japanese gazette system was ultimately derived from Ohkuma's LPJP.
So, the question is; why was the GJP formed in the year 1883 ? The main reason for posing this question is #94 official notice (Tassi) from the Great Council of State (Dajoukan) in 1881. Before the issue of the official notice, every ministry could enact any kind of law and regulation which were belonged to its own jurisdiction independently. However the official notice ordered a change to the enactment system. All bills of laws and regulations that belonged to the jurisdiction of every ministry must have been drafted by it, and they must have been sanctioned and promulgated by the Great Council of State (Dajoukan).
Consequently, this new system of enactment burdened the Great Council of State (Dajoukan) far more work than before. Also it made the traditional system of publication and promulgation of laws and regulations lose their validity because it was designed as the system by which every ministry enacted laws and regulations and it published and promulgated them by itself.
This loss of validity had been the internal necessity in the machinery of the MEIJI Government for the new system for the publication and promulgation of laws and regulations and it forced the GJP to be brought in practice.
