Ishii: From Criminal to Changed Man

There was a man in Japan in 1918— Ishii by name— who had committed almost every crime known to men: murders, some of them of the most brutal kind, robberies and assaults of all kinds, made up the awful sum of his record ; if ever there were a hardened and hopeless criminal here was one. Yet some one saw beyond the surface appearance to the reality that was there; and while he was in prison, awaiting his trial for the murder to which he had confessed, two frail women, English missionaries, visited that man, sent him a New Testament, and told him of Christ.

And as he sat in his lonely cell, he was suddenly smitten to the heart as he read the story of the Crucifixion, and in particular the prayer from the Cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” There is no other way adequate to describe what happened than to say that he was completely and utterly transformed. The warders and the Governor, Mr. Shirosuke Arima, and several other people who came into contact with him in prison were amazed at the real saintliness of that man’s life.

He wrote the story of his life — though he was an uneducated man — and it has been translated into English. When some one with very great influence in the highest quarters in Tokyo asked him if he would like to be given a fresh chance, he insisted that he ought to accept the responsibility that came to him on account of his crimes and of the laws of the land, and declared that his only desire now was to he with God, believing that his soul would enter into the rest of pardon.

After he was executed on August 17, 1918, the Buddhist chaplain who was with him told the story of his end thus: “Many who die on the scaffold face death with a firm resolution to win a good name for themselves at the end. But Ishii’s fortitude was Ear different from that.

He had not the slightest appearance of desiring to win a good name or of merely enduring the inevitable. With humility and great earnestness he seemed to see nothing but the glory of the heavenly world to which he was returning when he had cast off the heavy load of his sins; just as one turns with great longing to his own native home.

Among the officials who stood by and saw the clear colour of his face and the courage with which he bore himself, there was no one but involuntarily paid him respect and honour. On the very scaffold, when in a moment his life was to disappear like a dewdrop, he uttered those last words of his: ‘My soul, purified, today returns to the City of God.’ “