Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1880 — Fire Maws of Japan. [ARTICLE]

Fire Maws of Japan.

Tlie severity with which persons in Japan arc punished who nave the misfortune to be burned out Is stated as follows by the Scientific American: If the house is occupied and is accidentally set on fire, the person through whose carelessness the Are is started receives ten days’ imprisonment with hard labor: if it is inhabited and the fire be produced by the proprietor, then he is punished with twenty days; if the fire spreads to other houses, the sentence is forty days, aud when any body is killed thereby, one degree heavier; but if the person killed is a relative of the first degree, the punislfrnent is a hundred days; If the house belongs to the government, one hundred days; If a temple, from sixty days to one year, but ten years are inflicted if it happens to be one of the great temples of Isle, or in the precinct of tne imperial palace. If a robber sets fire unintentionally to a house, he is punished with at least three years’ imprison-, incut with hard labor. Decapitation awaits incendiaries, ten years’ penal servitude an attempt at arson; the punishment being mitigated if the would-be incendiary is a servant who has just received a sharp rebuke, or if the attempt lie made on an uninhabited dwelling. If a man seta fire to his own house, ninety days, hut if the fire spreads to houses pi tlie neighborhood, two years and a half: and penal servitude for life is inflicted if the offender profits by the opportunity of the fire to purloin goads or property.