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280 HONDA THE SAMURAI.
the usual number. This seems a small number of
prisoners for so large a city as Yedo, with its million
inhabitants ;
but it must be remembered that
there was little need for a large prison when the
death-penalty was prescribed for over two hundred
offenses, and that the man condemned in the morning
was beheaded on the same day, thus saving the
expense of confining him in prison. In many parts
of the empire there was no prison except in the
chief city of the province, or daimio's capital. The
reason of this was that offenders, when arrested, were
at once tried and executed, so that, as in an army,
prisons were not needed except at garrisons. The
feudal system in any country is only a modified form
of martial law, and under such a system the Japanese
then lived. "Under a higher civilization," as
Professor Koba used to say, "there will be many
more prisoners and prisons."
From the prison proper they walked to the execution-ground.
There were in or near the city three
of these aceldamas. One was in the southern suburbs,
Suzugamori ("Grove of the Tinkling Bells")
near Shinagawa, which Honda Jiro saw on first coming
to Yedo ;
another was in the northern suburbs at
Senji, near Asakusa, on the road to Oshiu; but the
number of executions at these two places was very
small compared with that in the prison-yard itself.
The business of waiting on the condsmned prisoners,
handling and burying their carcases, and attending
to all the ghastly and polluting details of the
innumerable beheadings was done exclusively by