Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/127

 a disreputable character. Nevertheless, before reaching the official court there still remained another tribunal to be consulted; the tribunal of the elders (toshi yori) and the headman (shoya or nanushi). The respect enjoyed by these persons gave great weight to their opinions, and they took infinite pains to reconcile all differences submitted to them, because failure to find a settlement discredited them in the eyes of the people as well as of officialdom. If, finally, a matter went to the deputy's court, his first proceeding was to re-commit it to the hands of some other headman for a final effort of arbitration, and thus the sum of the procedure was that only irreconcilable disputes or exceedingly obstinate disputants found their way to the court of the deputy or the magistrate. In short, law-suits were the exception, compromise and arbitration the rule. This cannot be affirmed quite so comprehensively of the great cities as of the provinces. Business relations and social intercourse being on a wider basis in the former than in the latter, disputes were often more complicated, and the influence of "groups" and "elders" was smaller in proportion to the range of their functions. But the difference is one of degree only.

Although these remarks refer chiefly to Tokugawa times, that is merely because the machinery of conciliation was better organised at that epoch, not because the conciliatory principle failed to receive as full practical recognition in other eras.