The first suspect
This book is a way of establishing a person's example as a good example for emulation. In the terms of jurisprudence, the cases become symbolic for various types of situations that can arise in the course of law, and one trustworthy way to handle them. In the case of the six corpses, there is a first suspect suggested by a local officer of the law who knows his neighborhood very well in terms of its citizenry, but his suggestion is actually a symbol for bias. He jumped to conclusions, whereas the honored judge takes his time and analyzes all the facts objectively.
The judge in disguise
Because his glory and power demand public honor according to local tradition, the judge is unable to easily leave his compound, and therefore he undergoes an archetypal transformation. The transformation is that powerful people can disguise themselves as everyday citizens to get a more oriented point of view about a situation. From within his undercover role, he is more able to appreciate the facts of the case, and he settles on a correct judgment. He is like the king in disguise amongst the people.
The discovery of evil
The book's portrait of jurisprudence is extreme and severe. The discovery that the judge makes in disguise is that the true criminal was not someone that would have stood out as a suspect necessarily. It was an explosive and catastrophic moment of personal anger that made the murderer kill six people in cold blood. This is undoubtably a jurisprudential symbol for the reality of human evil. In order to be as severe and fair as possible, the judge must understand the spectrum of human goodness without naivete.
The corpse motif
The judge must also be aware of the main threat around which law exists and operates: the risk of human death. As Hobbes's noticed in Western tradition, the government only exists to prevent the citizenry from having to fear death as an eminent threat. The judge in this Eastern tradition also understands that dynamic, so he hears the most relevant cases of all; the murder trials. He investigates human murder above all other crime, and for the taking of a human life, he imposes judgments which are archetypal and therefore extreme.
The severity of punishment
The extreme nature of his punishment will stand out as a common theme in Westerner's responses to this book. The American tradition at least prohibits the US government from imposing cruel or unusual punishments, but that is only the case because the government is made of people like this judge who are severe and extreme in terms of vengeance. The judge does not belong in a culture that prohibits him from vulgar displays of power, and so a wise reader will take from this symbolism a remembrance that human justice needs to always be addressed and improved, because cultural opinions of justice often deviate from what is philosophically just. At least, that is one possible modern analysis.
