Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/135

 ministrators, and if that is true anywhere it should be specially true of modern Japan, where not only the codes themselves, but also the laws they embody, are new to the people.

A leading feature of early Tokugawa administration was the enactment of measures to check abuses that virtually involved slavery. Traffic in human beings was common at that epoch. Servants and labourers were openly disposed of; children of both sexes were kidnapped for secret sale; girls were ruthlessly pledged to a life of shame; men made a business of acting as agents in such transactions, and offices existed where sales and purchases could be effected. The Tokugawa legislators declared it a capital offence to keep such an agency or to act in the capacity of agent. Doubts have been cast on the sincerity of this repressive effort, and in some degree they appear to be justified. For though between the years 1624 and 1734 no less than eight enactments were issued declaring the sale or purchase of human beings punishable with death, imprisonment, or confiscation of property, and forbidding that servants, male or female, should be bound for a longer term than ten years, still the sense of right in such matters did not always prove as strong as the dictates of expediency. Economical difficulties disturbed the continuity of this wholesomely drastic legislation. Thus, a disastrous failure of the rice crop in 1675, having caused great distress in the agricultural districts, all time-restric-