Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/79

 made in favour of the pickpocket. For him tattooing (ire-zumi) seemed a sufficient punishment, so that he stood in the same category with a person absconding without paying his score at an inn or a restaurant. In either case, however, repetition of the offence involved death. On the whole the records show that medival Japan's legislation partook of the severity which formerly characterised penal laws everywhere. To render punishments deterrent by their severity was the only course that suggested itself. Even such a petty offence as concealment of dutiable property so as to escape taxation might be visited with death; not before the close of the eighteenth century was the execution of a pregnant woman deferred until after the birth of her offspring, and six years previously to that reform a new regulation provided that if a criminal who had wounded a parent or a master died in prison, his corpse should be preserved in salt and the penalty of the law inflicted on it, even though the wounded man had recovered. It will naturally be supposed that in order to increase the deterrent effect of penalties, their infliction was made as public as possible. That was the case up to the year 1633. But the authorities then forbade any persons to attend an execution except those whose presence was necessary. The veto never became really effective, however. Executions continued to be public, though they seldom attracted many observers, the people of Japan not being troubled