Abstract
IN my letter on the subject (NATURE, December 27, 1894, p. 199), I have introduced my assertion of the old Japanese usage of the “thumb-stamps” on legal papers, with a qualifying clause—“although at present I have no record to refer to.” Continuing in my search, I have come across a passage which gives, confirmation to the statement. It is in the FÛzoku Gwahô, No. 50, p. 6, Tōkyō, February 10, 1893, where the details of the bastinado inflicted on criminals during the ancien régime are given, and reads as follows:— “When the criminals' guilt was ascertained, and they signed with ’thumb-stamps’ on papers in the Court, they were sent to prison with the magistrate's words, ’Sentence shall follow,’ which they used to understand as the signal of the approach of the day of punishment.”
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MINAKATA, K. “Finger-Print” Method. Nature 51, 274 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/051274d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051274d0
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