ed to remain exposed for three days. An open grave, the
upturned soil of which seemed almost entirely composed of dead men's
remains, waited to receive the dishonoured corpse, over which three or
four Etas, squalid and degraded beings, were mounting guard, smoking
their pipes by a scanty charcoal fire, and bandying obscene jests. It
was a hideous and ghastly warning, had any cared to read the lesson;
but the passers-by on the high road took little or no notice of the
sight, and a group of chubby and happy children were playing not ten
yards from the dead body, as if no strange or uncanny thing were near
them.

[Footnote 59: This last crime is, of course, now obsolete.]

THE GHOST OF SAKURA.[60]

[Footnote 60: The story, which also forms the subject of a play, is
published, but with altered names, in order that offence may not be
given to the Hotta family. The real names are preserved here. The
events related took place during the rule of the Shogun Iyemitsu, in
the first half of the seventeenth century.]

How true is the principle laid down by Confucius, that the benevolence
of princes is reflected in their country, while their wickedness
causes sedition and confusion!

[Illustration: THE GHOST OF SAKURA.]

In the province of Shimosa, and the district of Soma, Hotta Kaga no
Kami was lord of the castle of Sakura, and chief of a family which had
for generations produced famous warriors. When Kaga no Kami, who had
served in the Gorojiu, the cabinet of the Shogun, died at the castle
of Sakura, his eldest son Kotsuke no Suke Masanobu inherited his
estates and honours, and was appointed to a seat in the Gorojiu; but
he was a different man from the lords who had preceded him. He treated
the farmers and peasants unjustly, imposing additional and grievous
taxes, so that the tenants on his estates were driven to the last
extremity of poverty; and although year after year, and month after
month, they prayed for mercy, and remonstrated against this injustice,
no heed was paid to them, and the people throughout the villages were
reduced to the utmost distress. Accordingly, the chiefs of the one
hundred and thirty-six villages, producing a total revenue of 40,000
kokus of rice, assembled together in council and determined
unanimously to present a petition to the Government, sealed with their
seals, stating that their repeated remonstrances had been taken no
notice of by their local authorities. Then they assembled in numbers