Legal Acts of Manchukuo and Mengjiang:Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The article based of archival and previously unpublished research material is an attempt to re-storethe legal regulations system of Manchukuo and Mengjiang that had been created as independentstates in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and North-East China in the 1930s. The internal and external policiesof both political entities were controlled by the Japanese occupation forces. Manchukuo was createdas a model state, the standard one, including the matters of public administration and law, andthe Mongol-Go was a resource (economic) base of the occupants. The example of Manchukuo servesas a model to show the mechanism of pushing the local authorities to adopt the new legislation, thehierarchy of acts is built at both the initial and later stages of national development. The article providesthe characteristics, features and attributes differentiating normative and individual legal acts. The legalnature of law and its place in the system of normative legal acts of both countries are analyzed; thedetailed description of the legal acts originating from the various agencies of state power is given. Thestate system and the public authorities involved in the rule making process are studied; the bodies thatparticipated in the development and adoption of the legislation are marked, as well as the agenciesresponsible for the administrative ordinance and administrative enactment. The case of Mengjiang facilitatedto study the law technique, its features and drawbacks, as well as the reasons for those drawbacks.The authors conclude that in spite of the spiritual, cultural and religious closeness of the twopeoples, the building of the state system in terms of rule-making bodies, and the system of normativelegal acts differed much in Manchukuo and Mengjiang due to the goals that the Japanese occupationforces sought and that were largely encouraged by the local leadership of the occupied territories.Manchukuo and Mengjiang were eliminated on the 18th and 19th of August, 1945 respectively by thetroops of the Soviet Union and Mongolia.