JAPAN
These important changes did not stop at revision of the laws. They extended also to separation of the judiciary and the executive, hitherto always combined; to the creation of judges, procurators, barristers, notaries, and a new system of police, as well as to the establishment of law schools. Speaking broadly, Japan may now be said to resemble France closely in the matter of penal laws and penal procedure. In one respect she has fallen behind France: the preliminary examination of prisoners is conducted in secret, the assistance of counsel not being allowed to the accused. Public opinion is gradually arraying itself against that feature of the Code, and it will certainly be soon modified.
A reform that lagged slightly was the abolition of torture. In 1874 a notification ordered its discontinuance, reserving, however, to the examining judge discretionary power to employ it in exceptional cases. In 1876 the veto became complete. There has been a curious amount of misconception on this subject. Again and again European and American writers have alleged the existence of the old abuse, and on one occasion an English tourist carried home a conviction that unspeakable horrors were perpetrated in Japanese jails, cries of challenge and onset issuing from a fencing-school for policemen having been mistaken by him for the agonised shrieks of prisoners undergoing torture. The delusion no longer survives in an active form, but its protracted tenacity
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