PRISONS
In Yedo, the buildings employed as prisons were erected at Demmacho under the hereditary superintendence of the Ishide family. The governor of prisons was known as the roya-bugyo. Each prison was divided into five parts where people were confined according to their social status. The part called the agari-zashiki was reserved for samurai who had the privilege of admission to the shogun's presence; and in the part called the agariya common, samurai and Buddhist priests were incarcerated. The oro and the hyakusho-ro were reserved for plebeians, and in the onna-ro women were confined. Each section consisted of ten rooms and was capable of accommodating seven hundred persons. Sick prisoners were carried to the tamari, which were situated at Asakusa and Shinagawa, and were under the superintendence of the hinin-gashira. All arrangements as to the food, clothing, and medical treatment of prisoners were carefully thought out, but it is not to be supposed that these Bakufu prisons presented many of the features on which modern criminology insists. On the contrary, a prisoner was exposed to serious suffering from heat and cold, while the coarseness of the fare provided for him often caused disease and sometimes death. Nevertheless, the Japanese prisons in Tokugawa days were little, if anything, inferior to the corresponding institutions in Anglo-Saxon countries at the same period.
LOYALTY AND FILIAL PIETY
In the eyes of the Tokugawa legislators the cardinal virtues were loyalty and filial piety, and in the inculcation of these, even justice was relegated to an inferior place. Thus, it was provided that if a son preferred any public charge against his father, or if a servant opened a lawsuit against his master, the guilt of the son or of the servant must be assumed at the outset as an ethical principle. To such a length was this ethical principle carried that in regulations issued by Itakura Suo no Kami for the use of the Kyoto citizens, we find the following provision: "In a suit-at-law between parent and son judgment should be given for the parent without regard to the pleading of the son. Even though a parent act with extreme injustice, it is a gross breach of filial duty that a son should institute a suit-at-law against a parent. There can be no greater immorality, and penalty of death should be meted out to the son unless the parent petitions for his life." In an action between uncle and nephew a similar principle applied. Further, we find that in nearly every body of law promulgated throughout the whole of the Tokugawa period, loyalty and filial piety are placed at the head of ethical virtues; the practice of etiquette, propriety, and military and literary accomplishments standing next, while justice and deference for tradition occupy lower places in the schedule.
A kosatsu (placard) set up in 1682, has the following inscription: "Strive to be always loyal and filial. Preserve affection between husbands and wives, brothers, and all relatives; extend sympathy and compassion to servants." Further, in a street notice posted in Yedo during the year 1656, we find it ordained that should any disobey a parent's directions, or reject advice given by a municipal elder or by the head of a five-households guild, such a person must be brought before the administrator, who, in the first place, will imprison him; whereafter, should the malefactor not amend his conduct, he shall be banished forever; while for anyone showing malice against his father, arrest and capital punishment should follow immediately.
In these various regulations very little allusion is made to the subject of female rights. But there is one significant provision, namely, that a divorced woman is entitled to have immediately restored to her all her gold and silver ornaments as well as her dresses; and at the same time husbands are warned that they must not fail to make due provision for a former wife. The impression conveyed by careful perusal of all Tokugawa edicts is that their compilers obeyed, from first to last, a high code of ethical principles.