Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
73 Sword-swallower.
Thelifeofthebeggarscannothavebeenmuchdifferentfromwhatithasbeentheworld
over. They lived in hovels and shacks and scraped the best living they could. Such of the
temporary “non-humans” whose families might still have maintained relations with them
would perhaps receive some help from them, but the authorities would not encourage this.
However, certain employment was available to them; they could work with the law en-
forcement officers as jailers in the prisons, as executioners and torturers in the numerous
formsofphysicalpunishmentavailabletomagistrates;theywerealsocorpse-handlerscon-
cerned with the exposure of the bodies of criminals and with the provision of corpses for
the testing on them of new swords, and they were the clearers-up after calamities—floods,
typhoons,earthquakes,andfires—whichmightresultinbodiesofvictimswithnorelatives
to dispose of them.
All this reflects the reluctance of the ordinary person to deal with dead bodies, a re-
luctance that seems natural enough, but was enhanced in Japan by the preoccupation on
theonehandwiththeavoidingofuncleanliness characteristic ofthe
shintō
religion,andon
the other by the Buddhistic prohibition on the taking of life. The work performed by the
“non-humans” did not endear them to the merchants and other “good folk,” and tales are
recorded against them—how, for example, some would blackmail the pretty daughter of a
shopkeeper who might see them as they went by escorting a prisoner, saying to her: “This
