Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/137

 attaching to filial piety in Japan. Statutes enacted during the first half of the seventeenth century empowered a parent to have his son or daughter imprisoned,—always assuming the existence of a cause ostensibly reasonable,—and declared that whereas children must be responsible for the debts of a parent, the latter might not be held liable for his children's obligations unless he had pledged himself by deed to discharge them. Also, in the event of a dispute between a father and his son, the ward elder was to act as judge, appeal being allowed to a magistrate, but if the son was found to be in the wrong, the father had the right to determine his penalty. Failure to observe the duties of filial piety constituted a capital offence, and that this law was not a dead letter is proved by the fact that in 1717 a man underwent crucifixion for treating his mother with inhuman neglect, and, three years later, another had to commit suicide for severity to his step-mother. Nor was the system entirely punitory. Conspicuous exercise of the virtue of filial piety received ample recognition. In 1681 one Goroyemon, a peasant of Suruga, whose admirable conduct to his parents had been reported by the visiting censor, received from the Shōgun an autograph letter of commendation and was declared absolute owner of his farms. The practice thus inaugurated found embodiment in a law thirty-nine years later under the good Shōgun Yoshimune. He enacted that a tenant farmer distinguished for