Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/81

 accusations preferred against officials. The charge had to be shown at once to the incriminated official, who affixed his seal in proof of his readiness to attend in court when summoned for the purpose of answering the accusation. But there was no such thing as a regularly trained judiciary. The functions of judge were discharged by magistrates (bugyo), deputies (daikwan), or officials serving under them, and justice sometimes became quite inaccessible, owing to the incompetence or corruption of those dispensing it. Serious hardships resulted also from tardiness of procedure. Men charged with paltry offences lay in prison sometimes for years pending trial, so that death frequently ended their durance, or, driven by desperation to attempt escape, they became liable to capital punishment. In civil cases also the delays of the law exposed litigants to such heavy expenditure and inconvenience that it became habitual to expedite matters by bribing the judges. The first resolute attempt to correct these abuses was made when (1716) Yoshimune succeeded to the Shogunate. Rules were then enacted that no person accused of a lesser offence than murder or robbery must be held in custody for more than one hundred days without final trial, and that cases not disposed of within that time were to be specially reported to the authorities. Civil suits which had remained unsettled for six months, must be similarly reported, and as a judicial official upon whose hands a number of