After Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan, established the Tokugawa shogunate, and moved the capital to Edo — modern-day Tokyo — in the early 17th century, he ended hundreds of years of civil war and senseless killings. Weirdly, though, people still kept murdering each other. Plus, there were all these other crimes being committed all over the city.
So, the government authorized a group of agents to blind and torture as many people as it took to make everyone understand that Japan was now at peace. They were the police officers of feudal Japan. This is their story.
The Facts: Policing the World’s Largest City
By the 18th century, Edo’s population exceeded 1 million, making it the largest city in the world. About half of the residents were samurai, who could technically be investigated by peacekeepers but were ultimately only answerable to their feudal lord.
Except for extreme cases, they were effectively above the law due to their privileged status because while dates and names may change, the world largely remains the same. Still, that left about 500,000 commoners under the jurisdiction of two machi-bugyo (magistrates) and their police squads.
Each bugyo commanded 25 middle-ranked samurai known as yoriki. They wore armor under their attire and carried two swords with hakama pants to remind everyone they were samurai. They also traveled on horseback to show everyone they were important samurai, so if they were called to a crime scene, it had better have been for something big, like a murder.
Below yoriki you had samurai constables called doshin who actually did most of the real law enforcement in Edo by walking the streets with a sword. They didn’t wear hakama, though, because they were very low-ranked samurai.
There were somewhere between 240 and 280 of them in total. It’s not exactly a lot to handle half a million people. Yet samurai weren’t the only ones exempt from the regular rule of the law. The caste of Japanese untouchables, for example, were only accountable to their underworld king, while shrines and temples claimed that the only person above them was the emperor.
The doshin also employed civilian assistants (komono) and former criminals acting as confidential informants (okappiki). Many communities additionally hired their own security, i.e. the biggest guy with the biggest stick who was willing to work for the least amount of money. They were known as meakashi.
Put it all together, and you had a law enforcement system that kind of worked for almost everyone. Except for all those who got blinded and tortured.
Eye-Crushing and Bath Spying: Policing Tactics in Edo
Being a yoriki was an amazing gig. You weren’t pounding the pavement as that was the doshin’s job. You were also paid well, and people genuinely liked you. During the Edo period, three of the most popular professions chosen by commoners were sumo wrestling, firefighting and assisting police squads as a yoriki.
Back then cops were even allowed to enter the women’s section of a public bathhouse. This only happened early in the morning when it was usually empty. The purpose was to eavesdrop on conversations in the male section and gather intel. It was apparently common for bathhouse owners to use codewords to warn some of their clients that the place was bugged on a particular day.
By comparison, it wasn’t so great being a doshin. The pay was low and spending all day out on the street was dangerous. While they did get a sword, they were encouraged to leave it behind because it was preferred to keep criminals alive, so they could be tortured via proper channels.
Doshin usually carried a jitte truncheon that eventually evolved into the Edo equivalent of a police badge. There are many myths about the jitte, like how the additional, smaller prong near the hilt was used for catching swinging swords. The prong was primarily used for striking, hooking and restraining techniques.
To even out their chances against more dangerous criminals, some doshin used metsubushi (eye-crushers). It was an eye irritant like sand or ash deployed from a special container or from a sword sheath. It worked a bit like modern pepper spray. There were also stories of some unscrupulous doshin adding powdered glass to their eye-crushers. However, that still wasn’t the worst thing an Edo cop could do to you.
Squeezing Out a Confession: The Cornerstone of Edo Justice
Confessions were the cornerstone of the Edo judicial system. It just didn’t feel right to sentence a person unless they confessed to the crime. So, to make sure justice had been served, the cops were allowed, and basically mandated, to torture arrestees to get them to confess.
The milder version involved things like flogging or placing heavy stones on the body to crush the victim. Then there was the heavy torture. This tended to involve things like painful binding or suspending bodies in agonizing positions.
Since the punishments for heavier crimes in Edo included beheading, hanging, crucifixion or being boiled alive, there were cases of people not confessing no matter what the cops did to them. Those suspects usually still got the death penalty in the end, though.
Early confessions could get your punishment reduced, so the system resulted in a lot of innocent people being fined or exiled, which is still a lot better than being boiled alive.
Being acquitted in court after refusing to confess was technically possible but it was extremely rare since not finding someone guilty was considered a failure on the part of the police and magistrates. As a result, sometimes the innocent got hurt to protect other innocents.