A History of the Japanese People. Kikuchi Dairoku
intimate intercourse prior to the deed of blood in the great hall of audience, had fully matured their estimates of the Sui and Tang civilization as revealed in documents and information carried to Japan by priests, literati, and students, who, since the establishment of Buddhism, had paid many visits to China. They appreciated that the system prevailing in their own country from time immemorial had developed abuses which were sapping the strength of the nation, and in sweeping the Soga from the path to the throne, their ambition had been to gain an eminence from which the new civilization might be authoritatively proclaimed.
Speaking broadly, their main objects were to abolish the system of hereditary office-holders; to differentiate aristocratic titles from official ranks; to bring the whole mass of the people into direct subjection to the Throne, and to establish the Imperial right of ownership in all the land throughout the empire. What these changes signified and with what tact and wisdom the reformers proceeded, will be clearly understood as the story unfolds itself. Spectacular effect was enlisted as the first ally. A coronation ceremony of unprecedented magnificence took place. High officials, girt with golden quivers, stood on either side of the dais forming the throne, and all the great functionaries—omi, muraji, and miyatsuko—together with representatives of the 180 hereditary corporations (be) filed past, making obeisance. The title of "Empress Dowager" was conferred for the first time on Kogyoku, who had abdicated; Prince Naka was made Prince Imperial; the head of the great uji of Abe was nominated minister of the Left (sa-daijiri); Kurayamada, of the Soga-uji, who had shared the dangers of the conspiracy against Emishi and Iruka, became minister of the Right (u-daijiri), and Kamatari himself received the post of minister of the Interior (nai-daijin), being invested with the right to be consulted on all matters whether of statecraft or of official personnel.
These designations, "minister of the Left"*, "minister of the Right," and "minister of the Interior," were new in Japan.** Hitherto, there had been o-omi and o-muraji, who stood between the Throne and the two great classes of uji, the o-omi and the o-muraji receiving instructions direct from the sovereign, and the two classes of uji acknowledging no control except that of the o-omi and the o-muraji. But whereas the personal status of Kurayamada was only omi (not o-omi), and the personal status of Kamatari, only muraji (not o-muraji), neither was required, in his new capacity, to take instructions from any save the Emperor, nor did any one of the three high dignitaries nominally represent this or that congeries of uji. A simultaneous innovation was the appointment of a Buddhist priest, Bin, and a literatus, Kuromaro, to be "national doctors." These men had spent some years at the Tang Court and were well versed in Chinese systems.
*The left takes precedence of the right in Japan.
**The offices were borrowed from the Tang system of China a remark which applies to nearly all the innovations of the epoch.
The next step taken was to assemble the ministers under a patriarchal tree, and, in the presence of the Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the Prince Imperial, to pronounce, in the names of the Kami of heaven and the Kami of earth—the Tenshin and the Chigi—a solemn imprecation on rulers who attempted double-hearted methods of government, and on vassals guilty of treachery in the service of their sovereign. This amounted to a formal denunciation of the Soga as well as a pledge on the part of the new Emperor. The Chinese method of reckoning time by year-periods was then adopted, and the year A.D. 645 became the first of the Daika era. But before proceeding to really radical innovations, two further precautions were taken. In order to display reverence for the foundations of the State, the sovereign publicly declared that "the empire should be ruled by following the footsteps of the Emperors of antiquity," and in order to win the sympathy of the lower orders, his Majesty directed that inquiry should be made as to the best method of alleviating the hardships of forced labour. Further, a solemn ceremony of Shinto worship was held by way of preface.
Then the reformers commenced their work in earnest. Governors (kokushi) were appointed to all the eastern provinces. These officials were not a wholly novel institution. It has been shown that they existed previously to the Daika era, but in a fitful and uncertain way, whereas, under the system now adopted, they became an integral part of the administrative machinery. That meant that the government of the provinces, instead of being administered by hereditary officials, altogether irrespective of their competence, was entrusted for a fixed term to men chosen on account of special aptitude. The eastern provinces were selected for inaugurating this experiment, because their distance from the capital rendered the change less conspicuous. Moreover, the appointments were given, as far as possible, to the former miyatsuko or mikotomochi. An ordinance was now issued for placing a petition-box in the Court and hanging a bell near it. The box was intended to serve as a receptacle for complaints and representations. Anyone had a right to present such documents. They were to be collected and conveyed to the Emperor every morning, and if a reply was tardy, the bell was to be struck.
Side by side with these measures for bettering the people's lot, precautions against any danger of disturbance were adopted by taking all weapons of war out of the hands of private individuals and storing them in arsenals specially constructed on waste lands. Then followed a measure which seems to have been greatly needed. It has been already explained that a not inconsiderable element of the population was composed of slaves, and that these consisted of two main classes, namely, aborigines or Koreans taken prisoners in war, and members of an uji whose Kami had been implicated in crime. As time passed, there resulted from intercourse between these slaves and their owners a number of persons whose status was confused, parents asserting the manumission of their children and masters insisting on the permanence of the bond. To correct these complications the whole nation was now divided into freemen (ryomin) and bondmen (senmin), and a law was enacted that, since among slaves no marriage tie was officially recognized, a child of mixed parentage must always be regarded as a bondman. On that basis a census was ordered to be taken, and in it were included not only the people of all classes, but also the area of cultivated and throughout the empire.
At the same time stringent regulations were enacted for the control and guidance of the provincial governors. They were to take counsel with the people in dividing the profits of agriculture. They were not to act as judges in criminal cases or to accept bribes from suitors in civil ones; their staff, when visiting the capital, was strictly limited, and the use of public-service horses* as well as the consumption of State provisions was vetoed unless they were travelling on public business. Finally, they were enjoined to investigate carefully all claims to titles and all alleged rights of land tenure. The next step was the most drastic and far-reaching of all. Hereditary corporations were entirely abolished, alike those established to commemorate the name of a sovereign or a prince and those employed by the nobles to cultivate their estates. The estates themselves were escheated. Thus, at one stroke, the lands and titles of the hereditary aristocracy were annulled, just as was destined to be the case in the Meiji era, twelve centuries later.
*Everyone having a right to use public-service horses was required to carry a token of his right in the shape of a small bronze bell, or group of bells, indicating by their shape and number how many horses the bearer was entitled to.
This reform involved a radical change in the system and method of taxation, but the consideration of that phase of the question is deferred for a moment in order to explain the nature and the amount of the new fiscal burdens. Two kinds of taxes were thenceforth imposed, namely, ordinary taxes and commuted taxes. The ordinary consisted of twenty sheaves of rice per cho* (equivalent to about eight sheaves per acre), and the commuted tax—in lieu of forced labour—was fixed at a piece of silk fabric forty feet in length by two and a half feet in breadth per cho, being approximately a length of sixteen feet per acre. The dimensions of the fabric were doubled in the case of coarse silk, and quadrupled in the case of cloth woven from hemp or from the fibre of the inner bark of the paper-mulberry. A commuted tax was levied on houses also, namely, a twelve-foot length of the above cloth per house. No currency existed in that age. All payments were made in kind. There is, therefore, no method of calculating accurately the monetary equivalent of a sheaf of rice. But in the case of fabrics we have some guide. Thus, in addition to the above imposts, every two townships—a township was a group of fifty houses—had to contribute one horse of medium quality (or one of superior quality per two hundred houses) for public service; and since a horse was regarded as the equivalent of a total of twelve feet of cloth per house, it would follow,