At A Railway Station

Seventh day of the sixth Month;--
twenty-sixth of Meiji.

Yesterday a telegram from Fukuoka announced that a desperate
criminal captured there would be brought for trial to Kumamoto
to-day, on the train due at noon. A Kumamoto policeman had gone
to Fukuoka to take the prisoner in charge.

Four years ago a strong thief entered some house by night in the
Street of the Wrestlers, terrified and bound the inmates, and
carried away a number of valuable things. Tracked skillfully by
the police, he was captured within twenty-four hours,--even
before he could dispose of his plunder. But as he was being taken
to the police station he burst his bonds, snatched the sword of
his captor, killed him, and escaped. Nothing more was heard of
him until last week.

Then a Kumamoto detective, happening to visit the Fukuoka prison,
saw among the toilers a face that had been four years
photographed upon his brain. "Who is that man?" he asked the
guard. "A thief," was the reply,--"registered here as Kusabe."
The detective walked up to the prisoner and said:--

"Kusabe is not your name. Nomura Teichi, you are needed in
Kumamoto for murder." The felon confessed all.

I went with a great throng of people to witness the arrival at
the station. I expected to hear and see anger; I even feared
possibilities of violence. The murdered officer had been much
liked; his relatives would certainly be among the spectators; and
a Kumamoto crowd is not very gentle. I also thought to find many
police on duty. My anticipations were wrong.

The train halted in the usual scene of hurry and noise,--scurry
and clatter of passengers wearing geta,--screaming of boys
wanting to sell Japanese newspapers and Kumamoto lemonade.
Outside the barrier we waited for nearly five minutes. Then,
pushed through the wicket by a police-sergeant, the prisoner
appeared,--a large wild-looking man, with head bowed down, and
arms fastened behind his back. Prisoner and guard both halted in
front of the wicket; and the people pressed forward to see--but
in silence. Then the officer called out,--

"Sugihara San! Sugihara O-Kibi! is she present?"

A slight small woman standing near me, with a child on her back,
answered, "Hai!" and advanced through the press. This was the
widow of the murdered man; the child she carried was his son. At
a wave of the officer's hand the crowd fell back, so as to leave
a clear space about the prisoner and his escort. In that space
the woman with the child stood facing the murderer. The hush was
of death.

Not to the woman at all, but to the child only, did the officer
then speak. He spoke low, but so clearly that I could catch every
syllable:--

"Little one, this is the man who killed your father four years
ago. You had not yet been born; you were in your mother's womb.
That you have no father to love you now is the doing of this man.
Look at him--[here the officer, putting a hand to the prisoner's
chin, sternly forced him to lift his eyes]--look well at him,
little boy! Do not be afraid. It is painful; but it is your duty.
Look at him!"

Over the mother's shoulder the boy gazed with eyes widely open,
as in fear; then he began to sob; then tears came; but steadily
and obediently he still looked--looked--looked--straight into the
cringing face.

The crowd seemed to have stopped breathing.

I saw the prisoner's features distort; I saw him suddenly dash
himself down upon his knees despite his fetters, and beat his
face into the dust, crying out the while in a passion of hoarse
remorse that made one's heart shake:--

"Pardon! pardon! pardon me, little one! That I did--not for hate
was it done, but in mad fear only, in my desire to escape. Very,
very wicked have I been; great unspeakable wrong have I done you!
But now for my sin I go to die. I wish to die; I am glad to
die! Therefore, O little one, be pitiful!--forgive me!"

The child still cried silently. The officer raised the shaking
criminal; the dumb crowd parted left and right to let them by.
Then, quite suddenly, the whole multitude began to sob. And as
the bronzed guardian passed, I saw what I had never seen before,
--what few men ever see,--what I shall probably never see again,
--the tears of a Japanese policeman.

The crowd ebbed, and left me musing on the strange morality of
the spectacle. Here was justice unswerving yet compassionate,--
forcing knowledge of a crime by the pathetic witness of its
simplest result. Here was desperate remorse, praying only for
pardon before death. And here was a populace--perhaps the most
dangerous in the Empire when angered--comprehending all, touched
by all, satisfied with the contrition and the shame, and filled, not
with wrath, but only with the great sorrow of the
sin,--through simple deep experience of the difficulties of life
and the weaknesses of human nature.

But the most significant, because the most Oriental, fact of the
episode was that the appeal to remorse had been made through the
criminal's sense of fatherhood,--that potential love of children
which is so large a part of the soul of every Japanese.

There is a story that the most famous of all Japanese robbers,
Ishikawa Goemon, once by night entering a house to kill and
steal, was charmed by the smile of a baby which reached out hands
to him, and that he remained playing with the little creature
until all chance of carrying out his purpose was lost.

It is not hard to believe this story. Every year the police
records tell of compassion shown to children by professional
criminals. Some months ago a terrible murder case was reported in
the local papers,--the slaughter of a household by robbers. Seven
persons had been literally hewn to pieces while asleep; but the
police discovered a little boy quite unharmed, crying alone in a
pool of blood; and they found evidence unmistakable that the men
who slew must have taken great care not to hurt the child.