Abstract
2,862 trial records of criminal cases prior to the enforcement of the Criminal Procedure Law (January 1, 1882)
were transferred to the National Archives of Japan from the Ministry of Justice in 2005. This group of records
consists of judgement papers and records of confession statements of criminal cases that had been kept by public
prosecutors offices in various districts, and is valuable in that it has been held in a cohesive fashion.
However, even though some of the records have been discussed individually in legal history studies, there have
been few analyses of this group of records as a whole. Hence, this paper identifies the structure and features of the
records as a group by focusing on the file names with reference to the laws and regulations behind them, the flow
of records created in the trials of criminal cases, and the differences among the courts.
https://ror.org/00k6n7177 
