THE JAPANESE POLICE.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 138, 16 July 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE JAPANESE POLICE.

It is impossible to help laughing at the little Japanese policemen, with their mush-room-shaped hats, their little bow-legs, and their poor little feet pushed into stiff, unbending European shoes; and it may be a fact that they are no more useful than ornamental ; hut certain it is that since the organisation of the body on the European plan a very serious blow has been dealt to a profession which once numbered its members by thousands. The ronin, or robber, or wonderer, or knight-errant, as the case might be, was a being peculiarly Japanese. He partook of the nature of the Italian bandit, the Spanish guerilla, the English highwayman, and the Australian ‘ larrikin yet was none of these. At one time there was something ‘ Turpinesque’ about him ; at the present there is more of the area-sneak. He was often of good family and education—most often a retainer of some disbanded feudal household. He was not over-scrupn-lous in the matter of shedding human blood, but he respected the laws of meum and tuum much as Robin Hood or Rob Roy are said to have respected them, and generally roamed in fulfillment of some vow, or with some mission in view. When, however, the new order of things came to be established in Japan, and the great Lords were deprived of their power, the land was overrun by starving, sturdy, men-at-arms, brought up to a contempt of any trade but that of fighting, and, in that only, differing from the swarins of ‘ sturdy beggars’ who infested England after the dissolution of the monasteries; and, although many have been drafted into the imperial army and the police, the rOuin. still exists as a sort of mongrel specimen. He lurks about the dark corners of the suburbs through which the great roads from the country pass, and pounces upon poor travellers arri\ ing footsore and weary from long tramps; or he decoys them to tea-houses £f ill-fame, wherein they are certain to be pl ugged, robbed, and possibly murdered ; or po sneaks about looking for hall-opened ■shutters aud deserted rooms, wherefrom he ■may pick up unconsidered trifles. There is Lot an atom of romance or chivalry about [the modern ronin. An armed man of his [own size he will never attack, hut. for [damsels running errands, aged pilgrims, and gaping rustics he has a keen eye. Sometimes the ronin takes service with a European as ‘boy.’ The result is invariably wholesale robbery ; aud of late years the number of daring burglaries at lonely bungalows has been alarmingly great. If caught, however, he meets with no mercy, and the writer once saw seven members of the profession marched into the gaol near Yokohama, on a cold autumn morning, to an elevated piece of ground, and executed in a very few moments. —‘ All the Year Round.’

‘ What is your chief consolation in life ? asked a pastor of a young lady in his Bible } class. The young lady blushed and hesitated, but on the question being repeated, the ingenious lady said, ‘ I don’t like to tell you his name, but I have no objection to tell you where he lives. ’ When a young man wants to marry a girl, he has already made up his mind that she is worthy of him. The next thing for him to do is to make a rigid examination and cross-examination of himself to see whether he is worthy of her. In this [he should be unsparing of his own faults land shortcomings. If he comes to the Conclusion that the girl is better than he Kg let him at once and resolutely set him|elf to reform his own character and to Eradicate its defects. If, on the other land, he finds that he can conscientously lay that he deserves her hand, he may hafely conclude that, if her affections are 'not preoccupied by another, he can win kfrby fair and ioaouwble means.