No official executions were carried out in Japan for over 300years during the Heian period from the Kōnin era to the time of the Hōgen Rebellion. This fact has long been known, and has been taken up in many documents thus far. On the premise that this was not an abolition of the death penalty but a suspension, after examining the period and conditions pertaining to this suspension, this paper attempts to discuss the background and causes leading to such a phenomenon, and to explain the historical significance of this suspension in capital punishments.
　Various points have been made thus far regarding the background and causes of this suspension in capital punishments, all of which are understood to be factors. Among them a fear of vengeful spirits in particular has been most emphasized, and the author formerly subscribed to that idea. However, because there are cases in which execution was condoned even for serious crimes clearly committed by commoners not related to unreasonable deaths, a fear of vengeful spirits is not an adequate explanation. Also, such reasons were hardly discussed when resuming capital punishment, and there is even the opinion that in later aristocratic society executions were fundamentally avoided. This paper takes as its hypothesis the idea that executions were later carried out in aristocratic society and based on an analysis of the Go-Shirakawa Tennō Senmyō-an, defilement was seen as the greatest issue, and through the medium of defilement, examined its relationship with the situation pertaining to the Emperor and his court, and changes in imperial authority.
　The Go-Shirakawa Tennō Senmyō-an promulgated after the Hōgen Rebellion is a historical source that is often cited. This paper in particular focuses on the passage on the delay, due to the defilement of death, of the report made before the gods of the details of the rebellion and how it was subsequently handled. Defilement resulting by execution can be understood as a major issue. Defilement was systematized after the mid-ninth century, and was parallel to the process of purifying the emperor as high priest. The sanctioning of executions by the emperor gradually dropped off to avert the defilement of death, and the carrying out of executions was avoided to prevent the effects of such defilement on the court and palace.
　In this way, after a long hiatus capital punishment was resumed following the strife of the Hōgen Rebellion. This was not simply about the arising of the warrior families, but was also a major transformation in aristocratic society involving the court and emperor. At the point of the complete purification of the emperor as high priest, a new form of government was established, the cloistered government, and the retired emperor as a secular ruler exercised authority as the actual ruler. Moreover, as the concept of defilement became secularized, rarefied, and diffused, the earlier desire to avoid executions weakened. As a result, the emperor was able to preserve his purity, and the way was opened for the retired emperor to become involved in legal punishments and to sanction executions.
　The death penalty in Japan was suspended after the Kusuko Incident, and was resumed after the Hōgen Rebellion. Both were confrontations between a retired emperor and an emperor, and developed through a splitting of imperial authority. A suspension and resumption of the death penalty, it arose within the process of shifts in imperial authority, and was a unique phenomena.

　An important agenda of Nationalist government in the 1930s was to reform the public prosecution system and the “zisu” (private prosecution) system in the process of revising the Criminal Procedure Code. This article analyzes the operation of the zisu system, clarifies the background of the revision of the Criminal Procedure Code during the Nanjing decade, and examines the meaning of the establishment of the zisu system in China in the first half of the twentieth century.
　Although the public prosecution system established in the late Qing and Republican China was often heavily criticized, public prosecutors played an important role in criminal cases. In the Republican period, most people with no legal knowledge were accustomed to the traditional practice common during the Qing dynasty. In the criminal cases of that time, litigants, helped by their lawyers, submitted petitions to the courts. This practice did not always observe the due process of law, but was a useful method to resolve cases quickly and keep order. Thus, the private prosecution system was prevalent in the criminal procedure after the 1920s. To abolish the extraterritoriality, Chinese officials and scholars who participated in a legislation reform referred to the prosecution systems implemented in modern western law, especially German criminal procedure law. The discussion on the criminal prosecution system of that time influenced the development of the zisu system. Finally, the zisu system that had the Chinese original characteristics was established in the new Criminal Procedure Code in 1935. This system accepted litigants' prosecution broadly, operated legal practice under the modern western criminal procedure law, and strengthened the system of keeping order by the power of state. Thus, the Criminal Procedure Code comprised the public prosecution system and the private prosecution system. It can be said that Pre-modern Chinese litigious society where officials were closely related to the litigants and this helped to close cases quickly also influenced the establishment of the code.

　This paper clarifies the judicial order for all territories of the Holy Roman Empire rather than those existing in each state. In particular, it focuses on the imperial readership in it, centring on the Reichshofrat— one of the two supreme courts.
　Since the fall of the Nazi regime, with the Prussian school of history losing its authority, the fact that the institutions of the Empire worked to maintain order in early modern Germany has widely been accepted. Studies on the judicial systems prevailing under the Empire have been developed in the same context. Two supreme courts existed in the Empire during the early modern era: the Reichskammergericht under the Imperial State and the Reichshofrat under the direct control of Emperor. However, scholars have focused mainly on the Reichskammergericht; the Reichshofrat was ignored for a long time. It was suspected that the rulings of the Reichshofrat were manipulated by the Catholic prejudice by Emperors. Nevertheless, only recently have we realized that the Reichskammergericht and the Reichshofrat operated complementarily. The premise of this paper is that, in order to have a better understanding of the judicial systems of the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern era, we should consider not only the Reichskammergericht but also the Reichshofrat.
　New facts concerning the Reichshofrat have been disclosed by recent studies, especially since the end of the Cold War, when German and Austrian law historians began to collaborate. Their investigations appear to fit the abovementioned historiography on the Holy Roman Empire, but this paper does not adopt any hasty judgements. Instead, it traces the historical process through which the Reichshofrat was established, analyses each of its clauses and articles and evaluates imperial power in it before articulating its general characteristics.
　According to my research, Emperor Ferdinand III (1637-1657) promulgated the Reichshofrat in 1654 without consulting any of his subjects. His subjects were not able to cooperate with each other even to the extent of protesting such a tyrannical behaviour due to the severe religio-political struggles continuing within the ranks of the Imperial Estate immediately after the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Thus, he successfully evaded almost all interventions from his subjects. In addition, Ferdinand III intentionally left obscure the rules for procedure and appointment to maximise his discretion and that of his commissaries. This might paradoxically have contributed to the flexible and effective organisation of the Reichshofrat compared with the Reichskammergericht, which was strictly regulated and paralysed by its own code. Consequently, the former may have been preferred by a wide range of people wanting swift and feasible settlements of their disputes, and it may have therefore contributed to the maintenance of order. Thus, it gradually came to be believed that the Emperor was a peacemaker for the people. Certainly, this topic still requires many more individual case studies.

「Literature Review on Thai Legal History」
「Literature Review on Malaysian Legal History」
「Method and purpose of Indonesian legal history : From the perspective of historiography」

　This symposium takes up some new approaches for the investigation of legal history and probes into their possibilities. Yu-Lin Chiang treats mainly the pictures of Cheng-Po Chen and tries to read from them the legal situation and consciousness in Taiwan under the Japanese rule and after 1945. Asako Kuwahara researches into a work of Monzaemon Chikamatsu, “Hakata Kojoro Namimakura”, and presents through its reading the social structure and viewpoints on law in Tokugawa-Japan. Martin Avenarius investigates the reception of Roman law in the 19^thcentury Russia and argues on potential of the outsider’s view to recognize the hidden characters of Roman law. The lectures in the symposium are commented by Toshiharu Omuka, Yoko Kuroishi and Masahiro Hirata.