Of the gang represented in the illustration as robbing a rich merchant’s house, one or two probably are lonins, the rest being thieves in disguise.

The servants, kowtowing before two men, whose naked swords plainly intimate the consequences of any attempt to give alarm, or to offer resistance to their demands, have apparently been collecting all the money in the house and are laying it before the thieves.  The oblong boxes are iron safes, in which the Japanese keep their money.

From the position of the other members of the gang, it is evident that they have not got all they require, and are watching something going on in the interior of the house.  They have probably learnt that the merchant has to forward some money for the purchase of goods by a certain date, and know exactly how much to expect.

In the spring of 1865 the Tycoon, in levying a tax on the Yeddo merchants, congratulated them on the fact that the portion of the country under his immediate control was exempt from the depredations of lonins; but notwithstanding this statement, a robbery of the nature described took place in the capital immediately after the issue of the Tycoon’s manifesto, and a lonin concerned in it gave as an excuse for his conduct, that he had learnt that the money was intended for foreigners, who were settled in the country in opposition to the laws of Gongen Sama, which had never been revoked.

With such dread are these men regarded by the non-combatant classes, that it frequently happens that one or two will go into a village and extort what they require without the slightest resistance being offered.

[Illustration:  LONINS, or outlaws, robbing A rich merchant’s house.]

[Illustration:  Exposure for infidelity.]

As a rule, Japanese punishments resemble those inflicted by the Chinese, and seem to be based on the Mosaic principle of ’an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  Arson, for instance, is punished at the stake; and a thief who endeavours to conceal the results of his robberies by burying them, has the disadvantages of that mode of concealment impressed upon him, by being himself embedded for a day or two in the ground, with only his head out—­a mode of instruction that rarely requires a repetition of the lesson.

Apropos of this punishment is the testimony of an eye-witness, who, in passing the public execution place at Yeddo, noticed a head on the ground, which he supposed to have been recently struck off.  He had turned away with a shudder, when a laugh from the bystanders caused him to look again, when, to his great astonishment, the head was vigorously puffing at a pipe which the facetious executioner had a few moments before been smoking himself.

The last illustration shows a man and woman undergoing public exposure for adultery—­a crime which is rare in Japan and which is punished with great severity.