The following article is the first part of a translation of Dentō Chūgoku hō – hinagatasetsu ni taisuru ichishiron by Nakamura Shigeo, which was published in 1979 in the Hōsei riron 12:1 (Niigata University). The second part will appear in the next issue of the International Journal of Asian Studies.

While Chinese law is on the one hand widely understood to have contained minute administrative and penal provisions and to be related to the examination system, it has always been shadowed, on the other, by a different image. First, the law was seen to have been determined as no more than a reflection of political ideas and so to have been divorced from reality.