A History of the Japanese People. Kikuchi Dairoku
horse of medium quality at £5, ($25.), that the commuted tax in the case of land was above 5s.4d., ($1.30) per acre. Finally, each homestead was required to provide one labourer as well as rations for his support; and every two homesteads had to furnish one palace waiting-woman (uneme), who must be good-looking, the daughter or sister of a district official of high rank, and must have one male and two female servants to attend on her—these also being supported by the two homesteads. In every homestead there was an alderman who kept the register, directed agricultural operations, enforced taxes, and took measures to prevent crime as well as to judge it.
*The cho was two and a half acres approximately.
Thus it is seen that a regular system of national taxation was introduced and that the land throughout the whole empire was considered to be the property of the Crown. As for the nobles who were deprived of their estates, sustenance gifts were given to them, but there is no record of the bases upon which these gifts were assessed. With regard to the people's share in the land, the plan pursued was that for every male or female over five years of age two tan (about half an acre) should be given to the former and one-third less to the latter, these grants being made for a period of six years, at the end of which time a general restoration was to be effected. A very striking evidence of the people's condition is that every adult male had to contribute a sword, armour, a bow and arrows, and a drum. This impost may well have outweighed all the others.
SEPULCHRES
Another important reform regulated the dimensions of burial mounds. The construction of these on the grand scale adopted for many sovereigns, princes, and nobles had long harrassed the people, who were compelled to give their toil gratis for such a purpose. What such exactions had entailed may be gathered from Kotoku's edict, which said, "Of late the poverty of our people is absolutely due to the construction of tombs." Nevertheless, he did not undertake to limit the size of Imperial tombs. The rescript dealt only with those from princes downwards. Of these, the greatest tumulus permitted was a square mound with a side of forty-five feet at the base and a height of twenty-five feet, measured along the slope, a further restriction being that the work must not occupy more than one thousand men for seven days. The maximum dimensions were similarly prescribed in every case, down to a minor official, whose grave must not give employment to more than fifty men for one day. When ordinary people died, it was directed that they should be buried in the ground without a day's delay, and, except in the case of an Emperor or an Empress, the custom of temporary interment was strictly vetoed. Cemeteries were ordered to be constructed for the first time, and peremptory injunctions were issued against self-destruction to accompany the dead; against strangling men or women by way of sacrifice; against killing the deceased's horse, and against cutting the hair or stabbing the thighs by way of showing grief. It must be assumed that all these customs existed.
ABUSES
Other evil practices are incidentally referred to in the context of the Daika reforms. Thus it appears that slaves occasionally left their lawful owners owing to the latter's poverty and entered the service of rich men, who thereafter refused to give them up; that when a divorced wife or concubine married into another family, her former husband, after the lapse of years, often preferred claims against her new husband's property; that men, relying on their power, demanded people's daughters in marriage, and in the event of the girl entering another house, levied heavy toll on both families; that when a widow, of ten or twenty years' standing, married again, or when a girl entered into wedlock, the people of the vicinity insisted on the newly wedded couple performing the Shinto rite of harai (purgation), which was perverted into a device for compelling offerings of goods and wine; that the compulsory performance of this ceremony had become so onerous as to make poor men shrink from giving burial to even their own brothers who had died at a distance from home, or hesitate to extend aid to them in mortal peril, and that when a forced labourer cooked his food by the roadside or borrowed a pot to boil his rice, he was often obliged to perform expensive purgation.
OFFICIAL ORGANIZATION
At the head of all officials were the sa-daijin (minister of the Left), the u-daijin (minister of the Right) and the nai-daijin (minister of the Interior), and after them came the heads of departments, of which eight were established, after the model of the Tang Court in China. They were the Central Department (Nakatsukasa-sho); the Department of Ceremonies (Shikibu-sho); the Department of Civil Government (Jibu-sho); the Department of Civil Affairs (Mimbu-sho); the Department of War (Hyobu-sho); the Department of Justice (Gyobu-sho); the Treasury (Okura-sho), and the Household Department (Kunai-sho). These departments comprised a number of bureaux. All officials of high rank had to assemble at the south gate of the palace in time to enter at sunrise, and they remained there until some time between 11 A.m. and 1 P.m.
In a province the senior official was the governor, and under him were heads of districts, aldermen of homesteads (fifty houses), elders of five households—all the houses being divided into groups of five for purposes of protection—and market commissioners who superintended the currency (in kind), commerce, the genuineness of wares, the justness of weights and measures, the prices of commodities, and the observance of prohibitions. Since to all official posts men of merit were appointed without regard to lineage, the cap-ranks inaugurated by Prince Shotoku were abolished, inasmuch as they designated personal status by inherited right only, and they were replaced by new cap-grades, nineteen in all, which were distinguished partly by their borders, partly by their colours, and partly by their materials and embroidery. Hair-ornaments were also a mark of rank. They were cicada-shaped, of gold and silver for the highest grades, of silver for the medium grades, and of copper for the low grades. The caps indicated official status without any reference to hereditary titles.
RATIONALE OF THE NEW SYSTEM
The radical changes outlined above were all effected in the short space of eight years. If it be asked what motive inspired the reformers, the obvious answer is that experience, culminating in the usurpations of the Soga, had fully displayed the abuses incidental to the old system. Nothing more memorable than this flood of reforms has left its mark upon Japan's ancient history. During the first thirteen centuries of the empire's existence—if we accept the traditional chronology—the family was the basis of the State's organization. Each unit of the population either was a member of an uji or belonged to the tomobe of an uji, and each uji was governed by its own omi or muraji, while all the uji of the Kwobetsu class were under the o-omi and all those of the Shimbetsu class, under the o-muraji. Finally, it was through the o-omi and the o-muraji alone that the Emperor communicated his will. In other words, the Japanese at large were not recognized as public people, the only section that bore that character being the units of the hereditary corporations instituted in memory of some Imperial personage and the folk that cultivated the miyake (State domains).
All these facts, though already familiar to the reader, find a fitting place in the context of the great political development of the Daika era. For the main features of that development were that the entire nation became the public people of the realm and the whole of the land became the property of the Crown, the hereditary nobles being relegated to the rank of State pensioners. This metamorphosis entailed taking an accurate census of the population; making a survey of the land; fixing the boundaries of provinces, districts, and villages; appointing officials to administer the affairs of these local divisions, and organizing the central government with boards and bureaux. The system of taxation also had to be changed, and the land had to be apportioned to the people. In former days, the only charges levied by the State on the produce of the land were those connected with religious observances and military operations, and even in imposing these the intervention of the heads of uji had to be employed. But by the Daika reforms the interest of the hereditary nobility in the taxes Avas limited to realizing their sustenance allowances; while as for the land, it was removed entirely beyond their control and partitioned among the people, in the proportion already noted, on leases terminable at the end of six years.
Of course, whatever political exigency may have dictated this short-tenure system, it was economically unsound and could not remain long in practice. The measures adopted to soften the aspect of these wholesale changes in the eyes of the hereditary