Explore "Diplomacy" by Lafcadio Hearn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It had been ordered that the execution should take place in the garden of the _yashiki_ (1). So the man was taken there, and made to kneel down in a wide sanded space crossed by a line of _tobi-ishi_, or stepping-stones, such as you may still see in Japanese landscape-gardens. His arms were bound behind him. Retainers brought water in buckets, and rice-bags filled with pebbles; and they packed the rice-bags round the kneeling man,-so wedging him in that he could not move. The master came, and observed the arrangements. He found them satisfactory, and made no remarks.
Suddenly the condemned man cried out to him: -