AN EXECUTION IN JAPAN. BY ANDREW F. SIBBALD. IN the month of March, 1874, the last pub lic execution took place in Japan, or at any rate in the neighborhood of the capital, Tokio, and as I had heard that it was to be the last, I determined to witness it, prompted it might have been partly by motives of morbid curiosity, and partly by a desire to see even the ghastly phases of a condition oi national life which was then being gradually swept away forever by the wave of western civilization. In the above-mentioned year the state of law in Japan as regards criminals was very much what it was in England during the Middle Ages. The sword reigned supreme, and an almost invariable accompaniment of the sword was torture. The prisons were veritable hells upon earth—foul, over crowded, ill-ventilated, insanitary pesthouses, wherein festered without distinction of sex or crime every sort and condition of malefactor. All this has since been changed; even the sword has given way to the garrote, whilst torture is unknown, or at any rate illegal, the prisons are comparatively humane institutions, and the criminal law, which for centuries was of one character for the rich and another for the poor, has been com pletely reformed on the basis of the principal codes of European nations. This eventful March morning was cold and bright, and as I took my way along the narrow path lead ing up to the fatal plateau of Tobe, I could not refrain from drawing a contrast between the extreme loveliness of the scene, bright ened by the sunshine of a cloudless blue sky, and the awfulness of the spectacle by which it was soon to be blurred. Tobe Hill was especially beautiful on this bright, fresh March morning. Around the space on three sides stretched trees and thickets, displaying that wealth of variety in shape and color
which is so characteristic a feature of Japanese woodland scenery, and broken here and there by the red roof of a temple or the thatch of a humble cottage. On the four sides lay spread out a peerless panorama of the Bay of Yedo, with the line of the green hills which overlook the house-dotted Tocaido road trending away into indistinctness until they sank to the level of Kawasaki Point. I have never felt before or since as I felt during the long two hours I waited for the tragedy to begin; I knew that the sight would be a horrible one and that it would affect me both mentally and bodily, yet I seemed bound to remain by a sort of fascina tion. The native crowd packed closely to gether, swarming on the trees and availing themselves of every point of advantage seemed to treat the matter as a holiday ex hibition, provided for their entertainment; and laughed, chatted and smoked with the callous indifference bred by constant famil iarity with such scenes. In the middle of an open space some twelve yards square were five square holes a foot deep, the earth out of which was piled into neat heaps in front of each hole, just large enough to enable a man to squat on his heels. Behind the holes was a pile of coarse mats, such as the coolies use for rain coats, and near them a couple of pails of water and a camp stool, the whole being railed in by bamboo posts and cords. At nine o'clock a murmur of more than usual intensity and unanimity announced the approach of some part of the procession, and I saw over the heads of the crowd a smal' body of officials and coolies coming up the pathway from the prison. The first arrival, a man attired in a burlesque of the French military undress uniform, seemed to be the
