Kujikata Osadamegaki was a two-volume rulebook for Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese judicial bureaucrats during the Edo Period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 (江戸時代). It was enacted by Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune

Tokugawa Yoshimune

was the eighth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, ruling from 1716 until his abdication in 1745. He was the son of Tokugawa Mitsusada, the grandson of Tokugawa Yorinobu, and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu.-Lineage:...

 in 1742.

The book was used to determine appropriate judgements and punishments by servants of the daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

(大名), but these servants were not required to follow the guidelines of the Kujikata Osadamegaki. Rather, they were bound to mete out fair justice only by the Japanese Confucian directive to serve one's daimyō well.