, 1888-11-15

Scene in IA Japanese Police station-Nisi
to the Bureau of Newspaper Censorship.
SuspendIng an Offending JournaI-Secrct
Service.
A Japanese policeman was never known
70 smifu;- bHt-whea- he fndsi it necessary
to proceed to h extreme step of arrest
ing a lawbreaker his face becomes clouded
over with a pail of sorrow and solemnity
that would do credit to an Irish under.
taker taking the coffin measurement of
an archbishop. Grasping the offender
firmly with one hand. with the other he
extracts from an invisible pocket of great
capacity n roll of strong cord. Whisper
ing polite and minute directions in the
ear of the victim, who obeys them with
~scrupulous consideration for the feelings
of his captor, he winds the cord several
times around his waist and then attaches
his wrists in optical contact with the
small of his back. Six feet of cord re
main; the policeman grasps the loose end,
and bowling to the prisoner with N
after you, sir" the pair march away in
q touching union of sadness and security.
h neighborhood is paralyzed during the
performance, business is suspended and
traffic is stopped.
MARCHED OFF TO PRISON.
The formality of an arrest, however, is
the only amusing side of Japanese jus
tice. If you follow the white clothed
policeman and his prisoner you will soon
reach a police station in which sit a dozen
clerks and f-unctionaries hard at work at
books and counts and reports, with
nothing except their p~hysiognomy and
the little teapot and tobacco brazier be.
side each one to differentiate them from
similar European officials. The prisoner
will be taken before a superior officer, the
charge against him noted down; he will
be searched and then put in one of adozen
wooden cells, ten feet square perhaps,
separated from the central passage by
great wooden bars reaching from floor to
ceiling, and making a cell curiously like
an elephant house, but providing dmira-
bly, for ventilation in this hot climate.
At the police station he may not be kept
moro than twenty-four hours, and then he
is removed to a central station, which is
simply the first police station on a large
scale, minus the fu~nctionarieS and plus
the necessary arrangements for the deton-
ton of prisoners for long periods. The
courts are much like European courts.
After visiting many court rooms we
reached a room where twenty particularly
intelligent looking officials sat at both
sides of a long table piled up with news
papers, scissors, blue and red pencils, paste
pots and all the familiar equipment of the
exchange editors sanctum. | turned to
my guides for an explanation, and caught
them regarding me and each other with
amused smiles. Then | saw the joke.
1t was the Bureau of Newspaper Censor
ship, and these gentlemen with the spec
tacles and scissors and paste were exam
lining all the newspapers of Japan for
reasonable or seditious sentiments or i'm
proper criticism of ministerial and i'm
perial affairs. was introduced, the twenty
gentlemen rose simultaneously and the
laugh became general. This, said my
guide, waving his hand proudly over the
piles of newspapers and the teapots of the
censors, "is an institution you have not
yet reached in England"
CENSORSHIP OF III PRESS.
The procedure of this branch of the
Japanese police is simple in the extreme.
A lynx eyed censor discovers an article
Yhich seems to his conservative notions
to threaten the stability of the govern
ment, to bring a minister into contempt
or to foster improper agitation among the
people. He extracts it and submits it to
the director of the bureau, who probably
takes counsel with the higher authorities.
l. the censor's view is confirmed the edi-
tor of the paper is peremptorily but po-
ltely summoned-everything is done
politely in Japan, and / nave no doubt
that the school boy is politely birched and
the criminal politely ex~ecuted-to appear
at the department of police ut a certain
hour on a certain day. When that sum
mons m to join the innumerable cara
van of martyrs to n sense of journalistic
duty he knows that-in the expressive
language of the Bowery--he is a ''goner."
Sir, he is told, your estimable journal
Is suspended for so many days. Good
morning"
The whole system of secret police y
highly developed in Japan. There is O.
regular staff of detectives who disguise
themselves as laborers, merchants or tray
elers, or even in case it is necessary to
hunt down some great criminal, hire q
house in the suspected neighborhood and
live there. One of these men loses caste
very much in his office, if he does not &C.
tually suffer a degradation of position, by
failing to return with information he is
dispatched to secure. Besides these.
however, there is a regular staff of private
police correspondents in all parts of the
country, and one whole bureau at the de-
partment of police is devoted to receiving,
ordering, classifying these, and taking
action upon them. A good deal of infor.
nation u be picked up from the tea.
houses, each of which is n center ofgossip,
and in one or other of which almost every
male well-to-do inhabitant of Toxic is IN
habitue.-Tokio Cor. New York World.
The Man Who Laughs.
There is one man whose presence in a