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Today Tatsukichi Minobe is one of the most respected legal scholars in the
history of Japan. Educated in Germany, he represented the liberal constitutional
views against views of his senior colleague at the Imperial University of Tokyo,
Yatsuka Hozumi and his successor, Shinkinchi Uesugi. Minobe did not espouse the
divinity of the emperor. He argued that the sovereignty resided in the state, of
which the emperor is an organ (kikan). Though Minobe was not the first nor the
only one to challenge Hozumi's theory, his "emperor-organ theory" was severely
attacked when the military power ascended in the 1930's. As a result, his
publications on constitutional law including Kenpō satsuyō were banned
from the public in 1935. After World War II, however, his views gained much
popularity. This is the fifth revised edition of Kenpō satsuyō,
originally published in 1923.
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