Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/126

 a difference of opinion or even to suffer wrong. Of course, considering the wide interval that separated the "commoner" from the samurai by whom alone justice was administered, it would have been natural that the former should shrink from the presumption of thrusting his private affairs on the latter's attention. But that diffidence would not have produced so much effect had it not been supplemented by a settled conviction of the futility and peril of petitions and appeals in general, and further, had not the deputies and magistrates done everything in their power to deter recourse to litigation, law-suits being avowedly attributed by the central Government to partiality and want of vigilance on the part of local officials. There was another reason for avoiding the law courts. Unsuccessful suitors had to anticipate very harsh treatment, for upon them devolved the chief responsibility of carrying the case beyond the reach of conciliation. Thus arbitration and compromise became the rule, litigation the exception. When a dispute occurred, the parties submitted it, in the first place, to the members of the "five-men group," or groups, to which they belonged. These met in conclave, the disputants being present, and food and wine being served to promote a friendly spirit. Very seldom did the judgment of the group fail to satisfy the disputants, or at any rate to placate them. Indeed any case not settled in that manner assumed at once an unreasonable and even