Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/129

 infidelity induced a husband to appeal to the law for an investigation, which meant that the unfortunate woman had to undergo the ordeal of thrusting her hand into boiling water or grasping a red-hot axe. Many women conceived such a dread of the married state that they deliberately chose the life of domestic servants, thus incurring the plebeian stigma and becoming ineligible for patrician attentions in any form. Even the terrible custom of junshi, or dying to accompany a deceased chieftain, had lost something of the discredit attached to it by the ordinance of the enlightened emperor Suinin five centuries previously. Faithful vassals still took their own lives in order to be buried near their lord's tomb, and wives and concubines followed their example, voluntarily or on compulsion. Horses also were killed to serve their masters beyond the grave, and valuables of all kinds were interred in sepulchres, as had been the habit from time immemorial. When duty to the dead was not pushed to these extremes, the survivors considered it necessary at least to cut their hair or to mutilate their bodies.

All these abuses were strictly interdicted in the reformation foreshadowed by Prince Shotoku's adoption of Buddhism and Confucianism, and embodied in a series of legislative measures during the period 645 to 708. The nation suddenly sprang to a greatly higher level of civilisation.