Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/125

 reprimanded and that the whole village should be fined. A wholesale example of the operation of these laws was furnished in 1838, when the inhabitants of five hundred and forty-four villages and three post-towns in the province of Kai, rendered desperate by official extortion and bad crops, rose in insurrection, with the result that four were crucified, nine beheaded, forty-six transported, twenty-three driven from their homes, thirty-four scourged and tattooed, sixty-four fettered for several days, and one hundred and twenty-nine fined. In truth, the only resource for distressed peasants was to leave the district where they suffered, and even that step might not be taken unless all arrears of taxation had been paid.

Theoretically this system aimed at suppressing collective action without discouraging individual initiative. But it is evident that no such discrimination is possible in practice. Active courage of opinion will not survive the sense of permanent isolation. If a man knows that he can never hope for the cooperation of his fellows, or at any rate may not receive it except at heavy cost to himself and to them, self-effacement and patient endurance under all circumstances will become staple elements of his character. These elements were very apparent in the character of the Japanese under Tokugawa rule, and were perhaps most conspicuously displayed in the realm of civil law. Very few appeals were made to the official tribunals of justice: men preferred to compound