Capital punishment was much commoner in Japan in those days than it has been since the promulgation of the present humane penal code, and included transfixing with spears. Many of the foreign residents must have been present at such sanguinary spectacles, merely impelled by curiosity, and without the natural excuse of desiring to see the sentence of the law fulfilled upon an offender against their own blood.
The night before Sir Rutherford embarked for England news was brought to him of the arrest of Shimidzu Seiji, one of the actual murderers of Baldwin and Bird. Owing to the reputed excellence of the native detective police, which under a despotic government is usually efficient, it was believed by us that the Japanese Government could always have procured the arrest of the assailants of foreigners, if they had been determined to do so. The names, e.g., of many of those who were engaged in the attack on our legation in 1861 were, as I learnt some years afterwards, matter of common notoriety, but in the difficult political position that the Tycoon's advisers had created for themselves, they did not dare to convict the murderer of a foreigner. This then was the first instance of such a crime being brought home to its perpetrators. The British minister had good reason to feel gratified at this proof that his policy had been the right one, and it was a very natural movement that induced him to take off his watch and chain and throw them over the neck of the messenger of good tidings.
Shimidzu Seiji was executed on the 28th December at ten o'clock in the morning, in the presence of a detachment of the English garrison. Whatever doubts may have existed as to the complicity of Gamaiké and Inaba in his designs against the lives of the foreign residents, there is none as to the fact that this man was one of the actual murderers of Baldwin and Bird. I was instructed to accompany Mr. M. O. Flowers, the acting consul, to the prison on the preceding day to hear the sentence pronounced. We waited some hours till he arrived from Yedo in custody of a strong guard, and he was at once confronted with the witnesses, who examined his features in silence. They were then separately interrogated, and one and all recognized him, the most important witness being the boy who had seen the attack. Afterwards we proceeded to another room and questioned the prisoner, who acknowledged his guilt in the clearest manner possible. He was proceeding to say something more, but was ordered by the Japanese officers to be silent. But the best evidence of his identity was obtained by another member of the consular service, who after the murderer had been paraded round the town preceded by a banner on which his sentence was inscribed (this was part of his punishment), accompanied the procession back to the execution ground. Here Mr. Fletcher overheard him say: "When I killed the foreigners, I expected one of them might be a consul," and every one who knew our colleague will acknowledge that he was a man of the most exact truthfulness, who was not in the least degree likely to make a mistake in such a matter, or over anxious to believe that the Japanese Government were in this instance departing from the bad faith which is the usual refuge of Asiatics in a difficult position.
On the morning of the 28th the garrison was marched over to the execution ground, and drawn up on one side. The prisoner was brought out about ten o'clock. The first words he uttered were a request for some saké. Being again questioned, he frankly acknowledged his guilt. I asked him what it was that he had been prevented from saying to us on the previous day, to which he answered that if Bird and Baldwin had got out of his way he would not have attacked them. Whether this was true or not I have no means of judging, but it does not accord with his written deposition. That, it must be recollected, is not in Japan a simple record of everything a prisoner says, but is a reduction in writing by an officer of the court of the final result of all the statements made by him on the different occasions when he was examined, and resembles much more the summing up of the evidence on a criminal trial in England by the presiding judge. He begged the Japanese officials not to bandage his eyes, and began to chant a verse which might be thus translated:
"I do not regret being taken and put to death,
For to kill barbarians is the true spirit of a Japanese."
As the attendants were drawing back the clothes from his neck to prepare it for the executioner's stroke, he bade them loosen his cords so that they might do it with greater ease, adding: "In after ages they will say, what a fine fellow was Shimidzu Seiji." He also remarked, "I don't think the sword that cut off Gempachi's head will do for me," alluding probably to the thickness of his own neck, and begged that the blade might be well whetted. Then saying, "Cut neatly if you please," he stretched out his neck for the stroke. These were the last words he spoke, but just as the sword began to descend he turned his head to the left as if to address some further observation to the officials, so that the cut partly missed its purpose, and the executioner had to hack the head off—a most horrible sight. Simultaneously with the delivery of the first blow, a gun fired by the battery of Royal Artillery announced to all that the assassin had received the punishment of his crime, and we dispersed as quickly as possible. The head was taken to the bridge at the northern entrance of Yokohama and there exposed on a gibbet for three days. Copies of the sentence were posted up at Totsuka and at the scene of the murder, and a few days later I accompanied the Legation mounted guard to see that this part of the undertaking given by the Japanese authorities had been duly performed. We found that they had fulfilled their promises to the letter, and thus ended one of the most dramatic incidents in the whole of my experience in the country.
It was impossible not to hate the assassin, but nevertheless, looking at the matter from a Japanese point of view, I confess that I could not help regretting that a man who was evidently of such heroic mould, should have been misguided enough to believe that his country could be helped by such means. But the blood of the foreigners who fell under the swords of Japanese murderers, and the lives which were sacrificed to avenge it bore fruit in later days, and fertilised the ground from which sprang the tree of the national regeneration.