Seventeen Article Constitution

The moral code traditionally dated to 604 and attributed to Prince Shotoku, a founding text of Japanese government.

Overview

Recorded in the Nihon Shoki chronicle of 720, the Seventeen Article Constitution is traditionally attributed to Prince Shotoku, regent for Empress Suiko, and dated to 604. It is not a constitution in the modern sense but a set of moral and administrative precepts addressed to officials, opening with the injunction to value harmony and drawing on Confucian ethics and Buddhist teaching. It urges reverence for the Buddhist faith, obedience to imperial commands, diligence, and impartial judgment. Historians debate whether Shotoku wrote it or whether it was composed later, but it shaped the ideal of a centralized bureaucratic state and is still invoked as the symbolic beginning of Japanese constitutional thought.