With such detestation is it regarded, that, in addition to all legal cognizance, the husband is permitted, in certain instances, to avenge himself by taking the lives of the offenders upon the spot.

The board on the right contains the official intimation of the crime.

The curious instruments depicted in the woodcut are Japanese emblems of justice and are to be seen at all the guard-houses; they are used to catch runaway offenders or to pin a drunken yaconin against a wall or house, and so facilitate the task of disarming him without danger to the captors.

[Illustration:  Sodingarami, Satsumata, and Squobo.]

Although the Japanese use torture to extract information from obstinate criminals, they employ all necessary caution to preserve life; and a doctor and responsible officer are always present when it is employed, as representatives of the respective claims of humanity and justice.  A singular punishment, to which only the nobles of the country are liable, is secret banishment to the island of Fatzisiu, which is situated on the northern coast of the empire.  It is small and barren, rising perpendicularly from the sea.  The only communication with it is by means of a basket, which is lowered from an overhanging tree to the water, a distance of about fifty feet.[5] From this island there is no return, and the unhappy, incarcerated nobles, are compelled to support themselves by weaving silks, which are the most beautiful the country produces.  A junk visits the island once a-year, when the silks are exchanged for provisions.

[Footnote 5:  In 1853 an English man-of-war visited this island, and two of the officers were hoisted up in the basket for the purpose of taking sights.  One of them, who was my informant, describes it as a walled-in barren island, with no other mode of ingress or egress than that described.]

CHAPTER IX.

Superstitions and religious observances.

The Sintoo faith and Buddhism are the prevalent religions of the Japanese.  The teaching of the other sects is modelled more or less on the tenets inculcated by these two.  Some, however, hold a philosophic doctrine, which recognises a Supreme Being but denies a future state, holding that happiness is only to be insured by a virtuous life.

Sintooism may be regarded as the national religion of the country.  It inculcates a high moral standard; and its chief personage is the Mikado, or spiritual emperor, who is considered to be a mediator between his subjects and the inhabitants of the other world.

Every Sintoo has the image of a patron ‘kami,’ or ‘saint,’ enshrined in his house, to which he lays open his necessities and confesses his shortcomings, and by whose intercession with the Supreme Being he trusts at his death to be translated to the regions of the ‘kamis,’ as they designate their heaven.