In 1721, during the reign of the enlightened Yoshimune, who was Shogun from 1716 to 1746, there were many reforms, and it was then enacted that for all crimes, even those punishable with crucifixion and exposure of the head, only the criminal himself must be punished. In the case of the most heinous of all crimes, according to Japanese standards, parricide or the murder of a teacher, a special tribunal was declared to be the only place where it could be decided whether the children and grandchildren should be implicated. Interesting too is the fact that this leniency extended to the farmers and merchants only, the Samurai not being included, it being assumed that the crime of a person of nobility and education was a more serious matter than a crime by a person less fortunate—a theory of justice that has never taken root in the minds of the Occidentals except among romancers. From the time, early in the seventeenth century, when the governing power of Japan fell into the hands of the Buddhist Tokugawa family, through Iyeyasu, the head of the house, there was an endeavour to check the sale of children. No less than eight enactments were issued between 1624 and 1734 declaring the sale of human beings punishable by death. Progress naturally was slow when the conditions were so flagrant that there were open offices where the sales and purchase of children were effected.[115] In 1649 an absurd compromise was attempted when a law was passed declaring it was lawful to sell a child, providing that the consent of the child was obtained. There was an attempt to regulate, without abolishing, slavery in the law of 1655, which declared that in a dispute between an employer and the employed, the employer, if found to be in the wrong, might be imprisoned or meted out any punishment that the employed might suggest. It is safe to add that the administrative criminal machinery was not in the hands of the proletariat, nor was there any suffrage that threatened to put the employed in the position of judge. It was during this period that the law was passed allowing the parent to have his son or daughter imprisoned, a just cause being assumed. A father had the right to punish his son, but the son had the right to appeal to a magistrate for a review of the sentence; but “costs” of the appeal were dangerous inasmuch as if the son lost he had to suffer whatever penalty his father might dole out to him. The Occidental mind will not appreciate so readily the attempts of the Tokugawas, beginning 1627, to regulate the social evil, one of their early laws depriving employers of all authority “to retain the services of a female for immoral purposes outside the appointed quarter.”