The duty of the Otona was to give the necessary orders in case of fire; to have the oversight of the watch; to keep a register of the deaths, births, marriages, arrivals, departures, &c.; to arrest criminals, and to punish those of smaller magnitude; to compose, if he could, all disputes among the people of his street; and generally to be personally answerable for their good behavior. He had for assistants three lieutenants, the heads of the corporations of house-owners, a secretary, a treasurer, and a messenger. A guard was kept every night, of three or more house-owners, while the street was paced by two sentinels, walking from each gate till they met, and then back. The hours were regularly in the daytime struck on a bell hung for that purpose on the ascent of the mountains, and during the night the street-watch indicated them by beating two sticks together[153].
The street officers were held responsible for the offences of the house-owners; the house-owners for the offences of their lodgers, domestics, and families; masters for servants; children for parents, each corporation for its individual members; neighbors for each other[154]. It was naturally a part of this system that no new inhabitant was admitted into any street, except by consent of all the house-owners in it, which thus became necessary to every purchase and sale of a house.
Every year, a list was made out by the street officers of all the inhabitants in each street, with their religion, shortly after which came the ceremony of Yebumi[155], or figure-treading—that is, trampling upon the crucifix, an image of the Virgin Mary, and other saints—a ceremony which appears to be observed, at least at Nagasaki, down even to the present day. The images used in Kämpfer’s time were about a foot long, cast in brass, and kept in a particular box for that purpose. The ceremony took place in the presence of the street officers. Each house was entered by turns, two messengers carrying the box. The images were laid upon the bare floor, and, the list of the household being called over, they were required, one by one, to tread upon them. Young children, not yet able to walk, were held in their mothers’ arms, so as to touch the images with their feet. It has been asserted that the Dutch were obliged to submit to this ceremony; but the fact was not so.
To prevent smuggling, whenever the foreign ships or junks set sail the street gates of Nagasaki were shut, and kept closed till the ships were out of the harbor, strict searches being made, at uncertain times, on which occasions every inhabitant of the street was obliged to report himself. The same thing took place when criminals were searched for, or other investigations, sometimes very frivolous ones, were made. On these and other occasions of alarm, no one could go from one street into another, except with a written pass, and attended by an officer; nor could an inhabitant of Nagasaki at any time leave the city without a similar pass and an undertaking on the part of his neighbors for his return within a specified time.
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, banishment 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 reasonably 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[156]. 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 Yedo, which must likewise 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 Nagasaki, 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.
Examination of a Prisoner by Torture
“Some will observe,” says Kämpfer, “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, and, indeed, all over the East;—no necessity for being at law for many years together, no occasion for so many writings, answers, briefs, and the like. The case is, without delay, laid before the proper court of judicature, the parties heard, the witnesses examined, the circumstances considered, and judgment given without loss of time. Nor is there any delay to be apprehended from appealing, since no superior court hath the power to mitigate the sentence pronounced in another, though inferior. And, although it cannot be denied but that this short way of proceeding is liable to some errors and mistakes in particular cases, yet I dare affirm that in the main it would be found abundantly less detrimental to the parties concerned than the tedious and expensive law-suits in Europe.”
Certain yearly contributions, under the name of free gifts, were paid by all the house-owners and office-holders of Nagasaki, partly as perquisites to the governor and other officers, and partly for municipal purposes. So far as the house-owners were concerned, it amounted to a regular tax, levied according to the size of the lots; but this sort of levy was said to be unknown in other cities of the empire, and at Nagasaki was much more than made up for by the surplus share of the house-owners in the duty levied on the foreign trade, which, after paying all particular services and municipal expenses, was divided among them. The only other tax was an imperial ground-rent on the house-lots—four mas (fifty cents), in the old town, and six mas (seventy-five cents) in the upper town, for every ken (very nearly six English feet) of frontage, where the depth was not more than fifteen ken. On every lot exceeding that depth the tax was double. This is stated by Kämpfer to be the only town tax levied throughout the empire, whether in the towns of the imperial domain, or in those belonging to particular lords, and the city of Miyako, by a particular privilege, was exempt even from this.