Japan’s own Robin Hood
QUESTION What is the story of Nezumi Kozo, the Japanese Robin Hood?
Nezumi KOzO (‘Rat Boy’), was the nickname of a notorious — or celebrated — Japanese burglar of the early 19th century. it referred to his rat-like ability to sneak into houses undetected.
His real name was Jirokichi. Born in edo (now Tokyo) in 1797, at ten he was apprenticed to a woodworker. At 16 he returned to his parents’ household and became a firefighter at a time when edo consisted largely of wooden buildings. Firefighters were regarded as dashing heroes.
At 25, his father disowned him for some unspecified misconduct and he turned to gambling and crime. edo was the capital of the Shogun, the effective head of the feudal system and of the ruling samurai class.
under the system of ‘alternate attendance’ (sankin kotai) imposed by the Shogunate, the 300 or so daimyo (lords of the feudal domains into which Japan was divided) spent alternate years in edo under the Shogun’s eye and when they returned to their domains were required to leave their wives and heirs in edo as guarantees of their loyalty.
each daimyo was allotted a piece of land near edo Castle, the Shogunate’s administrative headquarters, on which to maintain a ‘mansion’ (yashiki), a large walled compound which housed him and his family plus the officials, servants and retainers who accompanied him from the provinces.
Nezumi Kozo targeted these mansions. Between 1823 and 1825 he is said to have burgled 28, some more than once. in 1825, he was caught in the mansion of the Tsuchiura daimyo and was sentenced to be tattooed and banished from edo.
in some places the custom was to tattoo the criminal with a single horizontal stroke, representing the number one, for a first offence, to add to it a curved line, forming the letter na, for a second offence, a third stroke, making the character ‘big’, for a third offence and a fourth stroke, making the character ‘dog’, for a fourth offence.
A fifth offence meant the death penalty, so any man with ‘dog’ tattooed on his arm was marked as a four-time loser. Nezumi Kozo disappeared from edo for some time but eventually returned in secret and resumed his criminal career. He was active for a further seven years before being arrested again in 1832.
under torture, he confessed to having stolen more than 3,000 ryo in more than 800 burglaries. A ryo represented the value of a year’s supply of rice for one person. He was sentenced to be beheaded and to have his head displayed in public while his body was used by samurai warriors for sword-practice.
Large crowds turned out to see him paraded through the streets to the execu- tion ground, and he is said to have been dressed in a gorgeous kimono and to have worn make-up, including lip rouge.
Because his victims were members of the ruling class, he became a popular hero and the fact that he was found when captured to have little or no money gave rise to the story that he had given it to the poor — although the more likely explanation is that he had gambled it away.
At that time, the members of the immediate family of an executed criminal would themselves have suffered the death penalty, and the fact that before his death Nezumi Kozo issued a divorce decree to his wife so that she would not suffer this fate is also regarded as a noble act. He has figured as the hero of countless novels and stories (including one by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, author of Rashomon), woodblock prints, kabuki plays, films, TV series and manga. graham Healey, School of east Asian
Studies, University of Sheffield.
QUESTION How efficient is a dog’s technique for drinking water? How does it work?
AS memBeRS of the order Carnivora, dogs have incomplete cheeks, which allow them to open their mouths wide to deliver killing blows. This makes suction drinking impossible.
Recent research has demonstrated that they use their tongues to raise water quickly upward through a process involving inertia.
Dogs repeatedly accelerate their tongues at a rapid rate into the water, curling them downward toward their lower jaws, not their noses.
When a dog withdraws its tongue from water, it creates significant acceleration — roughly five times that of gravity — to form a water column, moving upwards to the mouths.
When a dog accelerates its tongue upwards, some water remains in the ladle of the tongue and is tossed to either side of the dog’s mouth or falls downwards. it’s an efficient but messy process.
Cats, on the other hand, lightly touch the surface of the water with their tongues, never fully immersing them, and liquid adheres to the upper side forming an elegant water column.
Jane Simmonds, eccleshall, Staffs.