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474 EAST ASIA.
the West, those of Japan are almost empty. In 1873 they contained altogether
only 6,465 criminals, amongst whom there were less than 500 women, a proportion
relatively ten times less than in European countries.
Some French jurisconsults, invited to Japan in order to study and recast the
national laws, prepared a civil and penal code, which the Japanese Government
published
in 1880 as the laws of the State. But it is to be feared that several of
these innovations may have a tendency to disturb the sense of justice in the minds
of the people, many acts, such as tattooing and bathing in public, hitherto regarded
by them as perfectly harmless, being now treated as criminal. The chief object
aimed at by the Government in changing its jurisprudence is to offer such pledges
to the foreign powers as may induce them to renounce their privilege of exterritorial
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216. THE PILLORY IN JAPAN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.
jurisdiction, and allow their subjects to become amenable to the local authorities.
At present all
foreigners in Japan depend exclusively on their ambassadors and
consuls. But they are strictly forbidden to meddle with the politics of the country,
or even to publish Japanese periodicals under pain of imprisonment, fines, or hard
labour, inflicted by the consular courts.
For judicial purposes Japan is divided into four circumscriptions, with courts of
appeal at Tokio, Scndai, Ohosaka, and Nagasaki, respectively.
With the exception of a hospital founded by the Dutch physicians at Nagasaki,
Japan possessed no public establishments for the treatment of disease previous to
the revolutionary epoch. But with its usual zeal for imitating European institu-
tions, the country has begun to found hospitals in many places.
At the end of the