Georges Hilaire Bousquet

Georges Hilaire Bousquet (1845 to 1937) was a French legal scholar who contributed to the development of the legal codes of the Empire of Japan. Born in Paris, he graduated from the University of Paris and was a lawyer at the Court of Appeals in Paris when the Japanese diplomat Samejima Naonobu recruited him in 1871 as a foreign adviser to the Meiji government. Aged 26, he sailed for Japan in February 1872 and worked for four years with Gustave Emile Boissonade, helping to translate the Napoleonic Code into Japanese and to draft much of the Japanese civil code; he also taught at the Meihoryo, the law school of the Ministry of Justice. Back in France he rose to Deputy Director of Criminal Justice, was elected to the Council of State in 1879 and became Director of the Customs Department in 1898. He also wrote Le Japon de nos jours, published in 1877.