Kämpfer thus describes the persons who held the office of governors of Nagasaki at his arrival in Japan—“Kawaguchi Settsu-no-Kami is a handsome, well-shaped man, about fifty years of age, cunning and malicious, and a great enemy of the Dutch (who ascribed to him the authorship of the new arrangement for their trade), an unjust and severe judge, but an agreeable, liberal and happy courtier, with an income from his private estates of four thousand seven hundred koku. Yamaoka Tsushima-no-Kami had formerly been a high constable, and had been rewarded with his present office for his services in clearing Yedo of thieves and pickpockets. He had a private revenue of two thousand koku. He is about sixty, short, sincere, humble, and very charitable to the poor, but with so much of his old profession about him, that he often orders his domestics to be put to death without mercy for very trifling faults. Miyagi Tonomo, also about sixty, is a man of great generosity and many good qualities, with a private estate of four thousand koku of yearly revenue.”
To watch the governors, an imperial officer, called Daikwan, was appointed to reside at Nagasaki, and a like service was required of all the chief lords of the island of Shimo.
To secure the harbor and town these same lords were bound to march with their vassals at the first alarm. The princes of the provinces of Hizen and Chikuzen were obliged to furnish alternately, each for a year, the guard at the entrance of the harbor, which was independent of the governors. The inhabitants of the water-side streets of Nagasaki supplied the Funaban or ship-guard with its guard-boats to watch foreign ships in the harbor. There was another fleet of boats employed ordinarily in whale-fishing but whose business it also was to see all foreign vessels well off the coast, to guard against and to arrest smugglers, and to prevent any foreign vessels from touching elsewhere than at Nagasaki. Finally, there was the spy-guard, stationed on the top of neighboring mountains, to look out for the approach of foreign vessels; and on one of these hills was a beacon, which, being fired, served, in connection with other similar beacons, to telegraph alarms to Yedo.
Next in rank to the governors were four mayors or burgomasters, whose office, like most others, had become hereditary, and two deputy-mayors, principally for the affairs of the new town. They would seem to have once been the actual chief magistrates, but their authority had been greatly eclipsed by that of the imperial governors. There were also four other officers annually appointed to solicit the interests of the town’s people at the court of the governors, and to keep them informed of the daily proceedings of the mayors, for which purpose they had a small room at the governor’s palace, where they were always in waiting.
There was no town-house nor other public place of assembly. When the magistrates met on business, it was at the presiding mayor’s house. Besides the various bodies of interpreters and others, connected with the foreign trade, there was a particular corporation of constables and bailiffs, consisting of about thirty families, who lived in a street by themselves. Their office was reputed military and noble, and they had the privilege of wearing two swords,—a privilege which the mayors and mercantile people did not possess.
The tanners, obliged to act also as public executioners, were held in execration, yet they also wore two swords. They lived in a separate village near the place of execution, placed as everywhere in Japan at the west end of the town.
But the most remarkable thing in the municipal government of Nagasaki (and the same thing extended to all the other Japanese towns) was the system of street government, mentioned in the narratives of Don Rodrigo, Caron, and others, but which Kämpfer more particularly describes.
The house-owners of every street were arranged in companies, or corporations, of five Goningumi, or sometimes a few more, each street having from ten to fifteen such companies. None but house-owners were admitted into these corporations; mere occupants were looked upon as dependants on their landlords with no voice in the affairs of the street, nor right to claim any share in the public money, though they paid high rents. Each street company had one of its number for a head, who was responsible for the conduct of his four companions, and obliged, in certain cases at least, to share the punishment of their crimes. The members of these corporations chose from among themselves an Otona, or chief magistrate of the street. The choice was by ballot, and the name of the person having the greatest number was presented to the governor, with a humble petition that he might be appointed to the office, of which the salary in Nagasaki was a ten-fold share of the annual distribution to the inhabitants, derived from the duties on the foreign trade.
DIAL OF OLD CLOCK.