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At least 200,000 people are thought to have been executed in Edo Period (1603-1867) Japan. But once Japan entered the modernising Meiji Period things did not immediately improve. Mark Schreiber provides an extraordinary description of the 970 executions performed at Kotsukappara in 1873, noting that the execution rate works out to an average of 2.65 per day. A graphic account appeared in the Times of London apparently written by Anglo-Irish journalist Francis Brinkley (1841-1912) who had gone to observe the executions out of “vile curiosity”. He wrote: “I repented of it, but still it was a most extraordinary spectacle, and impressed me very much. “The culprits were eight in number, one being a woman. They were all beheaded with a sword. The operation was performed with wonderful dexterity and coolness, and not one of them, even the woman, showed the slightest symptom of fear… “What struck me most was the horrid coolness of the executioner’s assistant, a good-looking lad of 18; he went up to each poor wretch in his turn, gave him a tap on the shoulder, led him up to the mound, and made him kneel on the mat; he then stripped his shoulders, made him stretch out his neck, said 'That will do,' and in a flash the man’s head was in the hole in front of him and his bleeding neck was, as it were, staring me in the face. The assistant, still with the same pleasant smile, picked the head up, threw some water on the face to wash off the blood and mud, and presented it to the Japanese officials, who noted and signed to go on with the next; the assistant then gave the corpse a blow between the shoulders to expel the blood, and finally threw the carcase [sic] aside like a log of wood. He then repeated the same pleasant programme with the next… “There was a dense crowd of Japanese present, including many women and even children; these people never ceased to eat, smoke, and chatter the whole time, making remarks on the performance, and even occasionally laughing, just as if they were at a theatre. The executioner poured water on his sword between each decapitation, as one wets a knife in order to cut India rubber.” https://t.co/0j4KguX6Yk