714 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
quickened sympathy and a great deal of the joy of life out of it is pleasantly evident. If one wants a kind of culture that does not require money ; that will foster in him the sense of union with humanity ; that will keep him young by identification with something more enduring than his narrower self ; that edu- cates thought, feeling, and action ; that will give meaning and outlook to the com- monest relations, he may hope to find it by occupying himself, both reflectively and practically, with some phase of the life of the community in which he lives. PROFESSOR C. H. COOLEY, in The Inlander, Michigan University, March, 1905.
'Women and Crime in Japan. The Chuokoron publishes an article on " Women and Crime in Japan," by Mr. T. Yokoyama, the chief points of which we give below. The attention of sociologists has for some time past been drawn to this subject, and novelists have ever been wont to make women's crimes a leading feature in their stories.
1. The number of female criminals. The women guilty of grave offenses number far less than the men. The figures given by recent official statistics are men, 2,834; women, 341. Among these the men convicted of committing murder numbered 438, and the women 192. Thus we see that the proportion of murders to the total number of grave offenses committed by women is 56 per cent. ; whereas in the case of men it is only 15 per cent. As to minor crimes there is not much difference between men and women.
2. Adultery. Taking the average of the last ten years, the women con- victed of adultery have amounted to 323 per year, against precisely the same number of men. The following figures give the number of convictions for each year between 1892 and 1901: 1892, 250 men and 246 women; 1893, 312 men and 310 women; 1894, 266 men and 274 women; 1895, 295 men and 301 women; 1896, 328 men and 332 women; 1897, 349 men and 347 women; 1898, 329 men and 334 women ; 1899, 273 men and 272 women ; 1900, 239 men and 238 women ; 1901, 232 men and 235 women. Taking the total average, the number of men is 287, against 289 women.
3. Education and crime. Though some writers on crime have asserted that it is largely the result of want of education, Japanese statistics do not bear out this idea in the case of men, but in that of women they support it. Taking the three years from 1899 to 1901, the partially educated men convicted of adultery were about equal to the non-educated ; but among the women there were 80 uneducated to 12 partly educated.
4. Adultery and poverty. Adultery is comparatively rare among the poorest classes ; that is, the number of convictions is comparatively small among these classes.
5. Crimes that originate with adultery. In this country the practice of killing the wife who is caught committing adultery together with her paramour is very common, having come down from Tokugawa days, when the law sanctioned a husband's taking the law into his own hands in emergencies of this kind. But the killing of the husband either by the wife or by her lover in order to get him out of the way is almost equally common. The crimes which have been caused by adultery during the past ten years are recorded as follows : setting fire to the houses of their wives' paramours by husbands, 17 cases; setting fire to wives' houses by their paramours, 14 cases; setting fire to houses belonging to husbands by their wives' paramours, 5 cases ; setting fire to the houses of paramours by wives, 6 cases ; setting fire to husbands' houses by unfaithful wives, 4 cases ; unfaithful wives killed by their husbands, 41 ; paramours and wives killed together by husbands, 18 cases; husbands killed by adulterous wives, 38 cases; adulteresses killed by their lovers, 23 ; husbands killed by wives and their para- mours in collusion, 7 ; paramours killed by adulterous wives, 3 ; unfaithful wives and their lovers wounded by wronged husbands, 73. Mr. Yokoyama observes that, considering the population of Japan, the cases of proved adultery are comparatively few ; but he goes on to say that there are a large number of instances in which the crime though committed cannot be brought home to the persons concerned. Japan Mail.
