(Voice actor) Mr.David Radtke

Tadasuke Ooka is famous for being a great magistrate (judge) from the Edo period. He became the Edo Machi-bugyo in 1717. This position was like being the current day governor of Tokyo, the police commissioner and a judge of Tokyo Legal Affairs Bureau combined. The Edo Machi-bugyo used a rotating monthly system (tsukiban). There were two Machi-bugyo offices, the Northern Machi-bugyo and Southern Machi-bugyo. They took turns being in charge, shifting monthly. Tadasuke Ooka was the head of the Southern Machi-bugyo office. His reputation as a judge was very good, so they say. The “Ooka Seidan” (*a collection of judge Ooka’s cases”) was put together, further reflecting his popularity. The stories in Ooka Seidan became well-known through books and kodan (*storytelling performances) as the great judgements of Ooka Echizennokami (*the Governor of Echizen Province) Tadasuke . There are numerous anecdotes of his judgements in the Ooka Seidan. Here is one of them. There was a young child. Two women each claimed they were the mother of this child. Neither women would give up the child and finally came to the Southern Machi-bugyo for a trial to determine who the true mother was. Ooka summoned the two women and the child to his office, and told the women, “Pull each arm of the child. The one who wins this tug of war is entitled to the child.” Following his order, two women pulled the child’s arms as hard as they could. Naturally, the child cried with pain. One woman released her hands hearing the child cry. The other joyously claimed, “I am the mother.” “No. The one who released her hands is the true mother, for a mother can’t stand to harm her own child,” said Ooka and declared the woman who released her hands as the mother of the child. ”Tied Up Jizo" (*a Jizo is a statue of a Buddhist monk) is another of Tadasuke Ooka’s great judgements. A man named Yagoro was delivering textiles, the merchandise of a retail store. He stopped to rest at Nanzoin temple in current Katsushika ward, Tokyo, but fell asleep from fatigue in front of a Jizo. When he woke up, all the textiles were stolen. Yagoro went back to the retail store and told what happened. They demanded of him to pay for the stolen merchandise. Yagoro, at a loss, visited the Southern Machi-bugyo office to consult Tadasuke Ooka. “Go arrest the Jizo who watched the crime without doing anything,” Ooka ordered his men. So the Jizo was arrested and brought into the Southern Machi-bugyo office for the strange judgement to begin. What do you think Tadasuke Ooka intended by this?