Japan and the Japanese

268 JAPAN. A. D. 1690 1C92.
Accused persons were often made to confess by torture. Capital
punishments were either by beheading or crucifixion. Other punishments
and this class was often inflicted for the misdemeanors
of others were imprisonment, for longer or shorter periods, ban-
ishment to certain desolate spots and islands, and forfeiture of
property and office. Punishments were prompt and severe ; yet
great regard was had to the nature of the offence, the condition of
the person who committed it, and the share of guilt to be reason-
ably laid to the charge of his superiors, relations, or neighbors.
The practice of making young children suffer with their parents
was possibly intended as much in mercy to them as to aggravate
the punishment of the real offenders.* It is by this same motive
of humanity, that the Japanese justify their practice of exposing
such infants as they have not the means or inclination to support
and educate.
Persons sentenced to death could not be executed without a
warrant signed by the council of state at Jedo, which must like-
wise be consulted in all affairs of moment, provided they admit of
the delay necessary to send a courier and receive an answer. This,
however, did not prevent the governors of Xagasaki, and other high
officers, from liberally exercising the right of life and death in the
case of their own immediate servants and retainers. All servants,
indeed, were so far at the disposal of their masters, that, if they
were accidentally killed while undergoing punishment, the master
was not answerable. Yet, in general, as in China, homicide, even in
self-defence or undesigned, must be expiated by the blood of the
offender, and even his neighbors were, in many cases, held to a
certain extent responsible.
" Some will observe," says Kiimpfer, " that the Japanese are
wanting in a competent knowledge of the law. I could heartily
wish, for my part, that we Europeans knew as little of it as
they, since there is such an abuse made of a science highly useful
in itself, that innocence, instead of being relieved, is often still more
oppressed.
There is a much shorter way to obtain justice in Japan,
* It would seem from Guysbert, that the participation by young children in
the death decreed against the parents, was rather the act of those parents
who had the power of life and death over their children, and who did not
ch< )se to part with them iu this extremity.