With regard to the punishment of crucifixion, by which Sogoro was put to death, it is inflicted for the following offences:—­parricide (including the murder or striking of parents, uncles, aunts, elder brothers, masters, or teachers) coining counterfeit money, and passing the barriers of the Tycoon’s territory without a permit.[59] The criminal is attached to an upright post with two cross bars, to which his arms and feet are fastened by ropes.  He is then transfixed with spears by men belonging to the Eta or Pariah class.  I once passed the execution-ground near Yedo, when a body was attached to the cross.  The dead man had murdered his employer, and, having been condemned to death by crucifixion, had died in prison before the sentence could be carried out.  He was accordingly packed, in a squatting position, in a huge red earthenware jar, which, having been tightly filled up with. salt, was hermetically sealed.  On the anniversary of the commission of the crime, the jar was carried down to the execution-ground and broken, and the body was taken out and tied to the cross, the joints of the knees and arms having been cut, to allow of the extension of the stiffened and shrunken limbs; it was then transfixed with spears, and allowed to remain exposed for three days.  An open grave, the upturned soil of which seemed almost entirely composed of dead men’s remains, waited to receive the dishonoured corpse, over which three or four Etas, squalid and degraded beings, were mounting guard, smoking their pipes by a scanty charcoal fire, and bandying obscene jests.  It was a hideous and ghastly warning, had any cared to read the lesson; but the passers-by on the high road took little or no notice of the sight, and a group of chubby and happy children were playing not ten yards from the dead body, as if no strange or uncanny thing were near them.

[Footnote 59:  This last crime is, of course, now obsolete.]

THE GHOST OF SAKURA.[60]

[Footnote 60:  The story, which also forms the subject of a play, is published, but with altered names, in order that offence may not be given to the Hotta family.  The real names are preserved here.  The events related took place during the rule of the Shogun Iyemitsu, in the first half of the seventeenth century.]

How true is the principle laid down by Confucius, that the benevolence of princes is reflected in their country, while their wickedness causes sedition and confusion!

[Illustration:  THE GHOST OF SAKURA.]

In the province of Shimosa, and the district of Soma, Hotta Kaga no Kami was lord of the castle of Sakura, and chief of a family which had for generations produced famous warriors.  When Kaga no Kami, who had served in the Gorojiu, the cabinet of the Shogun, died at the castle of Sakura, his eldest son Kotsuke no Suke Masanobu inherited his estates and honours, and was appointed to a seat in the Gorojiu; but he was a different man from the lords who had preceded him.  He treated