Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/100

 such quick attainment of independence and social consideration.

Next to the abolition of torture for the purpose of eliciting confession, nothing is more notable in connection with the legislative reforms of the Meiji era than that all classes were placed on an absolutely equal footing before the law. During the eight centuries of military feudalism, from the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate to the fall of the Tokugawa, the samurai was a being apart. Special canons applied to his conduct, and special tribunals judged his offences,—the Monju-sho and the Samurai-dokoro under Yoritomo's system, and the Ometsuke, the Hoyōjō-sho, and the Metsuke under the Tokugawa. But the Meiji legislation removed such distinctions altogether. Whatever a man's rank or social status, if he falls into police hands he is carried at once before the nearest procurator, and if the latter deems that there are grounds of procedure, the case goes to a juge d'instruction, who interrogates the prisoner and the witnesses independently. These proceedings, as before remarked, are secret. The witnesses do not see each other's faces, nor are they cross-examined. If the result of this preliminary examination is to establish a primâ facie case, the accused is remanded for public trial by a public tribunal where three judges form a collegiate court. Meanwhile he may be released on bail. There is no jury, nor is there any law exactly corresponding to the habeas