Medieval Japan is occasionally portrayed as a place of Honor, Duty, and Bravery of Samurai
clans who dominated the era. However, there was another side of Samurai that was brutal, snobby,
and oppressive. They used extreme methods of torture, punishment, and oppression to keep
the population of Japan under their iron fist. Welcome to Nutty History, and today let’s find
out what horrifying punishments were normal in Medieval Japan. Medieval Japan theoretically
wasn’t that different from Medieval Europe. The king was the highest seat of power in the country.
A bunch of feudal lords underneath the king with varying degrees of power and wealth would assist
to rule and maintain his kingdom. However, the feudal lords of Japan were not some noble snobs
like European Aristocrats. They were hardcore Samurai Overlords called Shogunate. Shogunate were
military commanders appointed by the emperor to exercise military power on his behalf and because
the emperor gave shogunate all the military, guess who had the power now? By the fourteenth-century
Japanese Emperors were no more than a pupate of the biggest, baddest, Shogun of the country
and this created a massive divide in the commoners and the samurai class of Medieval Japan. With
different social statuses, came different rights for justice. Shoguns and Samurais were basically
considered above the law as they were the ones who were frankly controlling the judicial system. In
fact, that was their favorite method of testing a new sword. Peasants could end up getting the short
end of the stick or shall I say sword walking home after fishing as the glee of the peasant
may anger the samurai. Within minutes he would cut down the peasant in two halves just to get
a feel of his new Katana. There wasn’t even a pretense for an equal justice system for all.
The Shogunate were quite open about their superiority complex and during the fifteenth
century, they tried to solidify their control over the country by establishing increasingly detailed
codes of laws and appointing their loyal samurai retainers as magistrates and police with the power
and duty to enforce the laws. This turned Japan into a police state where peasants' lives were of
very little value. It was pretty much an eye for an eye sort of judicial system. Every crime was
considered as a debt created by one’s wrongdoings and it was expected of them to repay in kind.
If repayment wasn’t possible, the payment was made by making the criminal suffer the same
torment they caused others. Arsonists were burned at stake, thieves had their hands chopped off,
and women convicted of petty crimes were sentenced to work as prostitutes. Wait a minute… that last
one isn’t exactly payment in kind! Still, unlike China which usually treated women with less severe
punishments for the same crime than their male counterparts, Japan had no such gender bias and
equal punishments were imposed for the same crime no matter what your gender was. Female criminals
went to the gallows, ride along male criminals. But when it came to adultery, Japan resorted to
double standards and chose to punish women only and let men go scott-free. Women had their heads
shaved and their husbands were granted an automatic divorce with no alimony imposed.
Death by hanging may not sound like an extreme sort of punishment for us today as countries who
still use capital punishment commonly use hanging by the neck until death as capital punishment
but for medieval Japan, this was the worst way to go. Now mind you, Medieval Japan had other more
intense and cruel means of capital punishment. The second most common way to kill criminals
was execution by burning. Shogun had no issue in cutting men or women in half either. No,
I’m not talking about a David Copperfield magic trick here. These people were actually cut in half
with saws. The Kanazawa Han were the ones who coupled sawing in half with decapitation. Don’t
ask us why that was necessary! The most exotic form of capital punishment in Japan was being
boiled to death which was used in rarest of the rarest cases. Unlike Mughal rulers in contemporary
India who were boiling anybody and everybody quite liberally for rebelling against their religiously
driven rule in the same period, Japan used it for most extreme scenarios. The most prominent
record of being boiled to death in Japan is of one bandit named Ishikawa Goemon. Ishikawa Goemon’s
crime was to fail an attempt of assassination of Daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As a result,
he was ordered to be boiled to death along with his entire family. They were made to
sit in a giant bathtub together and were forced to watch each other die. The reason criminals
preferred to be killed by all these horrific and excruciating manners of death by hanging
was for a simple reason that being hanged was EMBARRASSING! As Gen Z says, death by hanging was
the normie way to be killed. But the reason why being hanged was considered a shameful way to go
is the humility that came before and after it. Japan’s feudal judiciary system was inexcusable.
Major crimes like theft, murder, and rape were often considered “unforgivable,” not only because
of their impact on the victim but because they demonstrated a disrespect for the law and social
order. Such crimes created a debt that could be “repaid” only by the perpetrator forfeiting his
or her life. It was a reality that transcended even the impermeable social hierarchy of medieval
Japanese culture. The criminals from low classes would be paraded around town before execution like
they were animals being prepped for sacrifice. Hanging executions were done in public as well
and criminals’ whole families would be called out for being related to a “heinous criminal”,
pretty much outcasting them from a very judgmental society. These kinds of executions were defiling
and degrading at the same time. Later, decapitated heads of executed criminals would be put on pikes
for display as a reminder of what they did and making sure the family’s wounds would never heal.
Although, the judicial accountability of Samurais, Daimyos, and Shogunate was far less
than the common rabble. They were still expected to maintain a decorum of their social class by
not turning into a murder fanatic. However, as we mentioned earlier the repercussions of samurais’
crimes against peasants were far lenient. It would go as far as being house arrested for killing a
bunch of peasants or burning fields of crops out just because a peasant looked at them “the
wrong way.” However, this freedom from persecution didn’t extend in the case of crime against other
Samurais or the government. Samurai who committed serious crimes were often given the right,
or likely were forced to commit seppuku, a form of ritual suicide in which the offending samurai
disemboweled himself with a dagger. The ritual also involved a “second,” called the kaishakunin,
who ended the samurai’s life with a merciful strike to the neck as soon as the fatal stomach
cut was completed. However, as a Kaishakunin you were not supposed to cut off a head clean.
They were supposed to make a slashing cut deep enough to kill the victim
but leave the head still attached to the body by a single strip of skin.
The thinner the strip of skin left attached to the body after decapitation,
the more respect a Kaishakunin would achieve from their peers for a skillful execution.
Treason was by far the biggest cause of Seppuku. Shoguns and Daimyo were extremely insecure about
their power of authority and anybody bad-mouthing them would be slapped with charges of treason.
Both samurais and peasants alike were ordered penalties in case of either
full-blown plotting to overthrow the authority or by merely stating “The Authority Here Sucks”.
As much as Ancient Japan was welcoming of Buddhism,
Medieval Japan was outright resistant to the idea of Christianity. Medieval Japan
was wary of foreigners and saw anything brought by them with a suspicious outlook.
Christianity was also considered by the Japanese ruling class as a tool of western imperialism
and thus it was obvious that its influence was considered dangerous to the authority. Shogunate
and Daimyos hunted Christians with zealous intent. If discovered, Christian men were hung upside down
in pits until they renounce their faith and reveal the name of fellow Christians who converted them.
Christian women had it way worse, they were stripped naked and forced to crawl through
streets. As if that wasn’t enough, they would be thrown in snake pits afterward. The punishers
somehow found watching naked women fighting and preyed on by snakes extremely perverse
and enjoyable. Well, that kinda explains how those weird animation shows from Japan came into
existence. Tell us in the comments if this video changed your perception of Japan or which other
time would you like us to cover in this series? And as always thanks for watching, Nutty History.