Persons sentenced to death could not be executed without a warrant signed by the council of state at Yedo, which must likewise be consulted in all affairs of moment, provided they admit of the delay necessary to send a courier and receive an answer. This, however, did not prevent the governors of Nagasaki, and other high officers, from liberally exercising the right of life and death in the case of their own immediate servants and retainers. All servants, indeed, were so far at the disposal of their masters, that, if they were accidentally killed while undergoing punishment, the master was not answerable. Yet, in general, as in China, homicide, even in self-defence or undesigned, must be expiated by the blood of the offender, and even his neighbors were, in many cases, held to a certain extent responsible. [Illustration: EXAMINATION OF A PRISONER BY TORTURE] “Some will observe,” says Kämpfer, “that the Japanese are wanting in a competent knowledge of the law. I could heartily wish, for my part, that we Europeans knew as little of it as they, since there is such an abuse made of a science highly useful in itself, that innocence, instead of being relieved, is often still more oppressed. There is a much shorter way to obtain justice in Japan, and, indeed, all over the East;—no necessity for being at law for many years together, no occasion for so many writings, answers, briefs, and the like. The case is, without delay, laid before the proper court of judicature, the parties heard, the witnesses examined, the circumstances considered, and judgment given without loss of time. Nor is there any delay to be apprehended from appealing, since no superior court hath the power to mitigate the sentence pronounced in another, though inferior. And, although it cannot be denied but that this short way of proceeding is liable to some errors and mistakes in particular cases, yet I dare affirm that in the main it would be found abundantly less detrimental to the parties concerned than the tedious and expensive law-suits in Europe.”