The Sun. — 1859-01-21 (London, England)

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS- OF THE  JAPANESE.  The following curious details are given in a letter in the Debats:—" The police are everywhere, and a person cannot move without having one of them near him. When the French landed, it was a place fixed on beforehand, and police agents were there ready to escort them to the house where the ambassador was to take up his residence, and whenever the party left the house to see the shops, the police agents kept by their side and cried out to the shopkeepers to hide certain kinds of merchandise, particularly books or maps relative to the country. Before Baron Gros landed he sent on shore his sedan chair and his French liveries in which the men who were to carry him were to be dressed, and he proceeded in that way from the waterside to his house ; the moment however that the Government were informed of it, they considered it an encroachment on their authority, and about 600 officials of different ranks were arrested and punished with fines or bastinado for having suffered such an enormity. The police stand in great dread of punishment, for whenever they were asked to do anything which they thought contrary to their duty, they showed great alarm and made a sign by putting their hands to their throats, as much as to say their heads would be in danger if they were to comply. To such an extent is the spy system carried, that whenever any one is appointed to any particular mission, a second person is ordered to watch all his motions and give notice of what he does. When the functions of the spy are openly avowed, no notice is taken, but when they are secret and relate to any high functionary, the person filling the post is obliged to use great circumspection, or he would very soon have a stone tied round his neck and be thrown into the sea. In that case, the Government would make no stir and would not hesitate, in case of need, to deny their agent. Every one in Japan appears to enjoy a certain degree of comfort ; the people are gay and healthy, and notwithstanding the analogy of race and habits, there are none of those disgusting scenes which in China are met with at every step. The Japanese are intelligent, polite, and brave, and they show nothing of that moral degradation into which the Chinese have fallen. Suicide is not looked on in Japan with great horror. The usual means adopted is to open the abdomen in the shape of a cross with a small sabre, and if the person has strength enough to cut his throat by a third cut he is looked upon as a hero. When a functionary or a private individual has committed anything which will bring him before a court of law, he anticipates his sentence by committing suicide. The trial is then cut short, and his heirs enter into quiet possession of the property of the deceased, and the son takes the office thus vacated by the father. If, on the contrary, the person waits his trial and is executed, he is dishonoured, and his family ruined by having all their property confiscated. In case of an insult, which in European countries would lead to a duel, the person receiving it seeks out the other in some public place, and rips up his own abdomen in presence of the bystanders. The insulter is obliged to do the same, or he and his family would be for ever dishonoured. The old custom of ripping open the body is, however, in some eases modified ; the person pretending to commit suicide merely inflicts on himself a slight scratch, but a friend who is standing behind birn cuts off his head by a single blow with a well-tempered sabre. The system of suicide is, however, so engrafted in the habits of the Japanese of a certain class that a handsome dress is kept for the purpose, open in the front, and when the deed is to take place the friends of the person are invited to be present, and have a sumptuous banquet served to them. There are even professors whose business is to teach the use of the sabre in a manner so dexterous that the wound shall not have the appearance of having been inflicted by a journeyman butcher." We may remark that this tendency to suicide which seems to have prevailed in Japan from a very remote period has apparently lost ground within late years, as the missionary writers (Jesuits) who gave an interesting account of the country, state that it was the custom of the Japanese when any of them was informed that he had incurred the displeasure of the Emperor to at once wipe out the disgrace by self-destruction. The number of deaths which occurred each year in that way was extraordinarily great.