Torture

Japan.

Japanese law was particularly severe, both pro cedurally and in its punishments. In trials for theft, a piece of red-hot iron was placed in the hands of the accused, who then flung it away. If his hand was unburned, he was innocent ; if burned, guilty. The punishment for theft involved tying the offender to great canes in the form of a cross, and his body was then twice run through diagonally by a spear. Confession was usually necessary before conviction, and in order to extract it, a "boot" consisting of heavy wooden planks was employed, and also the bow-strings. As a punishment, crucifixion was in general use, and accounts of fiendish tortures inflicted on Christians in the 17th century survive. (See Olearius 154-5, and Murdoch's History of Japan.) China.—In China, and other countries where the Chinese criminal code was accepted with local modifications (e.g., Annam and Burma) some regulation of the use of torture was attempted, although abuses were frequent. As in Japan, confession by the accused was necessary before punishment. The Ta T'sing Lu Li, the code of the Manchu dynasty, therefore, prescribes certain forms of judicial torture. These were applicable to witnesses also, and include the "boot" (which appeared in two forms: [1] boards between which the leg of the accused was crushed, and [2] a receptacle in which the leg was placed and boiling oil poured), the finger-compressor, kneeling on chains and beating the face. Those below 15 years of age, or over 7o, were exempt from torture, and also those suffering from permanent disease or other infirmity. Other forms, more cruel than those sanctioned by the code existed, although, according to the code, a magistrate who applied torture wantonly or arbitrarily was liable to prosecu tion. Among the illegal tortures, reported by the Chinese Reposi tory (vol. IV.) to be in use at the beginning of the 19th century were nailing to boards, beds of iron, red-hot spikes, boiling water,.

knives for cutting the tendon Achilles, the beauty's bar (so named after the wife of a judge, and comprising three cross bars to which the breast, the small of the back, and the legs bent up were fastened), the parrot's beam (in which the prisoner was raised from the ground by strings round the fingers and thumbs, attached to a beam) and the refining furnace. Torture

was also an incident in many punishments, execution by slow cutting to pieces being the most famous. In addition there were flogging (both with heavy and light bamboo) and the cangue, an instrument resembling, and having the same object as the pillory.

Though theoretically abolished at the beginning of the loth cen tury, torture is still practised in many parts of China.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For England: D. Jardine, Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England (1837). For Scotland: R. Pitcairn, Scottish Criminal Trials (1833). For Rome: Justinian, Corpus Juris, gives the law of the later Empire. For France: J. Imbert, Insti tutionum forensium galliae (Paris, republished Utrecht, 1649) N. Weiss, La Chambre ardente 1540-155o (1889). For individual cases, see W. Lithgow, Rare adventures and Painefull Peregrinations (repub. Glasgow, 1906) ; C, Dellon, Voyages avec sa relation de l'Inquisition de Goa (1712) ; J. von Haken, Narrative of Imprison ment in the Dungeons at Madrid, ed. J. Llanos (1877). For general information, see Lipenius, Bibliotheca realis juridica, s.v., "Tortura" (Frankfort, 1679) ; M. G. Libri's sale catalogue 0860 ; H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force (4th ed., Philadelphia, 1892) ; R. Wrede, Korperstrafen bei alien Volkern (Dresden, 1898) ; K. Kelbing, Die Tortur (1913) ; J. M. Gest (trans. and ed.), The Old Yellow Book (Boston, 5924). See further A. Bouche-Leclerq, l'Intolerance religieuse et la politique (1911) ; W. G. Soldan, Gesch. der Hexenprozesse (2 vols., 1911) ; C. T. Gorham, Mediaeval Inquisition: a study in religious persecution (1918). For China see G. T. Staunton's ed. of the Ta T'sing Lu Li (I8io) and Chinese Repository (1832-51). For Japan see J. Murdoch, History of Japan (1903 and 1926).