CHAPTER V

THE GREAT REFORM OF 645.

 

IT has already been remarked that the intercourse between the Yamato rulers and the Chinese Court, which had been resumed about 400 a.d., again came to a cessation with the year 502. During all this time and for the next eighty years the Middle Kingdom was a distressful and a distracted country. “Numerous States sprang up into existence, some founded by the Heung-nu and others by the Seen-pe tribe, a Tungusie clan inhabiting a territory to the north of China, and who afterwards established the Leaon dynasty in China. The hand of every man was against his neighbour. Nothing was lasting, and in 419 the Eastern Tsin dynasty, which had dragged on a chequered existence for nearly a century, came to an end, and with it disappeared for close on two hundred years all semblance of united authority. The country became divided into two parts, the North and the South. In the North four families reigned successively, two of which were of Seen-pe origin—viz., the Wei and the How Chow; the other two, the Pih Tse and the How Leang, being Chinese. In the South five different houses supplied rulers, who were all of Chinese descent. This period of disorder was only brought to a close by the establishment of the Sui dynasty in 590.”

During this sixth century the three kingdoms of Korea were engaged in their triangular duel, and two of them at least were eager to obtain Chinese support. Ko-gur-yu kept sending embassies to one or other of the Northern Chinese Courts, while Pakche was just as assiduous in her endeavours to gain the goodwill of one or other of the rivals of the house courted by Ko-gur-yu. Now, both Ko-gur-yu and Pakche, the latter especially, had a salutary respect for Japan, as indeed Silla had also. In the sixth century the goodwill of Yamato was of the most vital consequence to Pakche in her struggle with her two more powerful peninsular rivals, and she left no stone unturned in her effort to conciliate it. Statues of Buddha and sutras were far from being her only presents to Japan. Year in, year out, Pakche appears to have kept a distinguished savant as professor of Chinese philosophy and Chinese litera­ture at the Yamato capital, and we frequently hear of one learned doctor being exchanged for another. In 602 an important event in Japan’s intercourse with the continent took place. “A Pakche priest named Kwal-leuk arrived, and presented, by way of tribute, books of Calendar-making, of Astronomy, and of Geography and Geomancy, and also books of the art of invisibility and of magic. At this time three or four pupils were selected, and made to study under Kwal-leuk. One studied the art of calendar-making, another studied astronomy and the art of invisibility. Yet another studied magic. They all studied so far as to perfect themselves in these arts.” As adumbrating the state in 602 a.d. of the most advanced culture in what has been destined to become the England of the Far East, this notice is of some slight consequence. However, in 602, and for many long years afterwards. Great Britain was a good deal more backward, it must be admitted.

This event took place under the enlightened administration of Shotoku Taishi. Just as the Japanese of the later Toku­gawa age were swift to perceive that the Dutch Merchants of Light in Deshima were purveyors of the discoveries of Britons, Americans, Frenchmen, and Germans, Shotoku Taishi promptly discerned that the Pakche savants were merely transmitters of the culture of the Middle Kingdom. Accordingly he resolved to repair to the fountain-head; and five years later the famous mission of 607 was dispatched to the Court of Lob-vang, where the warlike debauchee Yang-ti (605-617), the third monarch of the Sui dynasty, held state. The Chinese account of this mission, and Motoori’s comments upon the Chinese account, are equally amusing. When Yang-ti “ordered his officers to inquire into the Japanese customs, the envoy said: ‘The Wa Prince considers Heaven his elder and the Sun his younger brother. At dawn he goes out to hear matters of government sitting in state cross-legged. On the Sun appearing he teases the conduct of business, and leaves it to me his younger brother.’ Yang-ti said: ‘This is most outrageous talk and admonitions were at once given for it to be altered.” The Japanese envoy, Imoko, Mono no Omi, was not a very brilliant diplomatist. The Pakche men searched him, and relieved him of his dispatches on his way home through their country, and he was going to be banished for this miscarriage when ‘‘the Empress Suiko made an order, saying:—‘Although he is guilty of losing the letter, We cannot easily punish him, for in that case the guest of the Great Country would hear of it, and this is undesirable.’ So he was pardoned and left unpunished.”—to save face!

Another Chinese history, in its account of this mission, gives a letter from the Empress Suiko in which is the famous sentence: “The Ten-shi (Son of Heaven) of the place where the Sun rises sends a letter to the Ten-shi of the place where the Sun sets.” “If the Empress Suiko,” says Motoori, “really sent such a letter, she treated the Chinese sovereign with far too much civility, and if she had addressed him with some such language as, ‘The Heavenly Emperor notifies the King of Go (Wu)’ he ought to have been filled with gratitude, instead of which he is represented by the Chinese historiographer as having been offended at being treated as an equal. But the truth is that Suiko Tenno wanted to get something from him and therefore condescended to flatter his vanity.” The Japanese envoy was accompanied on his return by a Chinese embassy and the Empress Suiko showered civilities upon its members, but Motoori does not care to dwell on that. Shortly after the re-opening of Japan to intercourse with the outside world about half-a-century ago, batch after batch of young Japanese were sent to study in foreign lands, and the stream of such students still continues to flow on. Not a few of these men have subsequently writ their names large in the annals of Meiji, and some of them have affected the destinies of the Empire profoundly. It may well be doubted, however, whether any of these have had as large a share in re shaping the national polity as some of that first band of four lay and four priestly students dispatched to prosecute their studies in China in 608. Most, if not all, of them were either Chinese or Korean immigrants or the descendants of such, settled in Yamato and Kawachi. Some of these came back in 632, while two of them stayed on at the Chinese Court until 640; that is, for more than thirty years. Two of these,—Bin, the priest, and Kuromaro Takainuku,—were made “national doctors” on the second day after the coup d'etat of 645, this being the first appointment made by the Reformed, or rather the Reforming Government. The Reform consisted mainly in Sinicizing old Yamato and its institutions; and it was these men who sat in the chancellery, drafted the decrees, organised the bureaucracy, and prompted the great Kuromaku, Kamatari, and the seemingly all-powerful Heir Apparent alike. By themselves they had to discharge the functions of the legion of foreign employes on whom the statesmen of the early years of Meiji relied for advice, if not for inspiration.

The quarter or third of a century during which these men sojourned in China was an all-important time in the history of the Middle Kingdom. When they arrived there in 608, the Sui dynasty, which had just again reunified China after cen­turies of anarchy, appeared to have consolidated its position and to be reasonably certain of a long lease of life. The founder of the house, Yang Keen, had ruled with vigour, and some of his work has been permanent and endures even to this day. Among other things he made a survey—a sort of Domesday Book—of his empire, and portioned China out into interdependent provinces, prefectures, and districts, with corresponding officers, an arrangement that has ever since existed. His attempt to introduce the caste system of India, however, was not very successful. His son Yang-ti (605-617), who began by making his elder brother, the rightful heir to the throne, strangle himself, and who has been called a Chinese Caligula, was an able man, in spite of all his aberrations and debaucheries. He extended the frontiers of his empire through the Tarim valley, and down to the Southern Ocean, and although his first attempt on Ko-gur-yu at the head of 300,000 men was a failure, he was on the point of success in a second venture when he was recalled by intelligence of the domestic insurrection which cost him his life and his throne (617 a.d.).

In the following year (618) Li Yuen, Prince of Tang, esta­blished the illustrious dynasty of that name, which continued to sway the fortunes of China for nearly three centuries (618- 908). After a brilliant reign of ten years he handed over the Imperial dignity to his son, Tai-tsung (627-650), perhaps the greatest monarch the Middle Kingdom has ever seen. At this time China undoubtedly stood in the very forefront of civilisation. She was then the most powerful, the most enlightened, the most progressive, and the best governed empire, not only in Asia, but on the face of the globe. Tai-tsung’s frontiers reached from the confines of Persia, the Caspian Sea, and the Altai of the Kirghis steppe, along these mountains to the north side of the Gobi desert eastward to the Inner Hing-an, while Sogdiana, Khorassan. and the regions around the Hindu Kush also acknowledged his suzerainty. The sovereigns of Nepal and Magadha in India sent envoys; and in 643 envoys ap­peared from the Byzantine Empire and the Court of Persia.

The Chinese Caligula of the Sui dynasty (605-617) had had decided literary tastes and he had done something to remodel the Chinese system of examinations; indeed it was by him that the second or Master’s Degree is said to have been in­stituted. On the other hand, he kept the University and the great provincial schools closed during the last ten years of his reign (600-616). The second Tang sovereign, however, not only remodelled the University and the provincial academies, but he organised that famous system of examinations which has ever since his days been such a prominent feature in the social and political economy of China. The Middle Kingdom had had for ages what Japan had never had,—codes of law; and Tai-tsung undertook a task not entirely dissimilar to that essayed by Justinian a century before. He did not live to see the result of his labours, for the new Code of the Empire was not completed until two or three years after his death in 650. Tai-tsung was unquestionably one of those rare monarchs who not only reign but rule. He was the master, and not the tool, of his officers; but, subject to him and to the law they administered, these officers were supreme in their allotted spheres. Their authority could be questioned by no local chieftain or feudal potentate. Tai-tsung was not merely the head of the most powerful clan in the land—a sort of primus inter pares among a number of chiefs of rival houses,—he was undoubtedly Emperor before whom every one of his 50,000,000 subjects had to bend. It has been well said that he and China exercised a humanising effect on all the surrounding countries, and led their inhabitants to see the benefits and understand the administration of a government where the laws were above the officers.

Now, what must have been the effect of all this on the minds of the two or three able, astute, and alert Japanese then at the Chinese Court, with the express official mandate to prosecute their studies there at the expense of the ruler of Yamato? In the summer of 1863 a band of four Choshu youths were smuggled on board a British steamer by the aid of kind Scottish friends who sympathised with their endeavour to proceed to Europe for purposes of study. These friends possibly did not know that some of the four had been protagonists in the burning down of the British Legation on Gotenyama a few months before, and they certainly could never have suspected that the real mission of the four youths was to master the secrets of Western civilisation with the sole view of driving the Western barbarians from the sacred soil of Japan. Prince Ito and Marquis Inouye— for they were two of this venturesome quartette—have often told of their rapid disillusionment when they reached London, and saw these despised Western barbarians at home. On their return to Japan they at once became the apostles of a new doctrine, and their effective preaching has had much to do with the pride of place Dai Nippon now holds among the Great Powers of the world. The priest Bin—whoever he may be, whether Shoan of Minabuchi or somebody else—and Kuromaro Takamuku no Ayabito, who proceeded to China in 608 as the earliest Kwampisei [literally, official-expense students] in Japanese history, rendered even more illustrious service to their country perhaps than Ito and Inouye have done. For at the Revolution of 1868, the leaders of the movement harked back to the 645-650 a.d. period for a good deal of their inspiration, and the real men of political knowledge at that time were not so much Prince Naka no Ove and the great Kuromaku Kamatari, as the two National Doctors of 645, Bin (or Min), the Buddhist priest, and the layman Kuromaro Takamuku no Ayabito.

To put ourselves in the places of these old men, and to realise their feelings on again setting foot on the beloved soil of old Yamato after an exile of more than thirty years, is a task involving no small effort of the constructive imagination. Yet the endeavour must be attempted by any one who wishes to understand this most critical and all-important period in the history of the Japanese Empire.

Then and now,—608 and 640! In the former year, when the famous eight set their faces Chinaward with all the high hopes and buoyancy of youth, Yamato, under the benevolent yet strong administration of Shotoku Taishi, seemed to be marching steadily forward and upward on the path of progress. The worst abuses of the clan system were being grappled with, the Central Government was beginning to assert its powers at the expense of the chieftains and heads of groups, to extend an effective control over the national resources, and to unify and consolidate the Empire as it had to be unified and consolidated before Japan could hope to deal satisfactorily with her over­sea problems in the peninsula. Furthermore, an earnest attempt was being made to assimilate that higher continental culture which was so essential for the regeneration of Yamato. Now, in 640, the evils of the clan system were more rampant than ever. Not only was the sovereign destitute of the resources necessary to make his authority felt, but the occupant of the throne had become a mere tool of the Soga, who seemed to be upon the point of attempting to establish a dynasty of their own. And under such a dynasty Yamato would not likely be any better off. The case of the Sogas was merely an unusually glaring instance of the evils naturally inherent in the old social and political system. So long as every magnate con­tinued to do just what was right in his own eyes, the nation must remain impotent for any collective effort and enterprise. More than the Soga must be made away with; the clan and group system must likewise go; and the Empire be funda­mentally reformed socially and politically.

The necessity of all this and more was doubtless strongly represented to Kamatari and Prince Naka no Oye what time “they both took in their hands yellow rolls and studied personally the doctrines of Chow and Confucius with the learned teacher of Minabuchi.” At all events, as has been just said, one of the earliest, indeed the very earliest, appointment made by the new Emperor Kotoku was that of the priest Bin and Takamuku to the post of “National Doctors.”

If the chieftains and heads of groups had had any inkling of the fact that the assassination of Soga Iruka was merely the first step in a series of measures levelled at their own preponderance in the State, it is not likely that they would have lent such ready support to the two great conspirators when they fortified themselves in the temple of Hokoji. However, the future Reformers kept their own counsel well and proceeded cautiously enough at first.

Their first step, the nomination of three Ministers,—those of the Left, Right, and Interior,—did not excite any misgivings, for although the names were Chinese, the offices seemed to be those of the Oho-omi and Oho-muraji of former reigns. The introduction of the reckoning of time by year-periods, as in China, could give no offence, and a sort of oath of allegiance couched in Chinese phraseology may very well have struck the nobles as a meaningless and harmless innovation. The next steps must have done something to make them restless; and this perhaps gave the Soga Prince, Furubito no Oye, his oppor­tunity to assert his pretensions to the throne. On the 5th day of the 8th month, 645, “Governors of the Eastern Provinces were appointed. Then the Governors were addressed as follows: In accordance with the charge entrusted to Us by the Gods of Heaven, we propose to regulate the myriad provinces.” These governors were to prepare registers of all the free subjects of the State, and of the people under the control of others, whether great or small. They were to look closely into the titles of the magnates claiming lands or jurisdiction within their districts. They were to build armouries, and to collect all the weapons in the possession of individuals and store them there.

This step was tentative only; no more than eight governors, —all for service in the East,—were appointed at this time. The next measure was more plainly levelled at the heads of groups. Hitherto they had exercised absolute jurisdiction over their subjects. Now the latter were allowed an appeal to the Central Government and the Emperor. In the next month, when the weapons had been stored in the armouries and possible malcontents thus disarmed, a decree was issued strictly forbidding powerful men to engross land and extend their hold­ings at the expense of the peasants, their less powerful neighbours, or the State. Then, in the first month of 646, the Reformers ventured upon a series of drastic measures which must have carried consternation into many a great house in Yamato. “As soon as the ceremonies of the New Year’s congratulations were over the Emperor promulgated an Edict of Reforms (in four articles)I. Let the people established by the former Emperors, etc., as representatives of children be abolished; also the miyake of various places and the people owned as serfs by the Wake, the Omi, the Tomo no Miyakko, the Kuni no Miyakko, and the chief men of villages. Let the manors of serfs in various places be abolished.”

It has been mentioned that one way of extending the Imperial domain had been to institute Be or groups to commemorate the names of childless sovereigns, Imperial consorts, or other members of the Imperial Household, and on various other pretexts. In course of time the hereditary heads or managers of these groups had established a virtual independence and had appropriated the lands and serfs as their own. In other cases these estates had been seized by neighbouring magnates. Now, with a single stroke of the inkbrush the Crown recovered all these manors and a very great deal more besides, for the whole system of Be or Tomo was now swept out of existence. The Central Government was careful, however, not to leave the more influential heads of groups unprovided for. They were now as far as possible employed as functionaries, and assigned “fiefs for their support.” This term calls for special remark, for a “sustenance-fief” was a very different thing to a “ fief ” as we usually understand the term. It means the taxes of a certain district, or of a certain number of families assigned as a salary for the support of a functionary, or Court favourite, who otherwise had no interest in or jurisdiction over the district or its inhabitants.

What always militated against the enduring possibility of a strong Central Government in Japan was not so much distance as difficulty of communication, for the country is a replica of ancient Hellas on an extended scale. In 646 the Empire of Yamato, with a population of 3,000,000 or 3,500,000, covered no more than 65,000 or 70,000 square miles, since at that date the southern half of Kyushu, and some 35,000 or 40,000 square miles in the north of the main island, remained unsubdued. At that time the Middle Kingdom was at least twenty times as extensive as Yamato, with at least fifteen times the population of Japan. But thanks to the great rivers, the magnificent canal system, the public roads connecting the capital with a network of great walled towns situated mostly in wide and level plains and therefore easily accessible, Tai-tsung’s authority could readily make itself respected in every nook of his broad domains, for against any recalcitrant province he could readily throw the resources and the forces of its obedient neighbours. In Japan there were no great rivers, no great canal system, no magnificent public roads. Between Lake Biwa and the Southern Sea there was one considerable plain; but even in Yoshino in Yamato, and in the Kishfi peninsula, there were mountains that afforded a ready asylum for refugees from the real or fancied oppression of the sovereign. Then from the site of modern Osaka on to the Straits of Shimonoseki, the Inland Sea afforded an easy and what should have been a safe avenue of communication. Safe, however, it was only on the exceptional occasions when the Central Government was something better than a hollow sham. As a rule it was what Cilicia and the southern seaboard of Asia Minor were before Pompey took them in hand in 67 BC,—a pirates’ lair. In spite of that, however, the Central Government generally contrived to keep the way open between the capital and the vice-royalty in Chikuzen, so important as a base for communication with the Korean States and the Middle Kingdom, while Anato or Nagato and Kibi appear to have generally been well maintained under central control. Beyond Lake Biwa towards the Sea of Japan, the province of Koshi was slowly extending its frontiers at the expense of the Yemishi or Ainu; but time and again we meet with notices of events there which make it tolerably plain that the local magnates were wont to act very much as if there had been no such person as the Emperor of Japan. Among the mountains of Hida, and the mountains and table-lands of Shi nano, the Imperial writs, if they ever by any means penetrated so far, were simply so much waste paper. On the Pacific seaboard from the Owari Gulf westward it was somewhat different. Mino, Owari, Suruga all bent to Yamato rule in varying degrees at various times, while on both sides of Tokyo Bay and in the spacious and fertile plain at the head of that inlet the Japanese had ousted the Ainu and established themselves pretty securely. But to bring these outlying provinces into due subordination to the central authority was no easy matter. From Tokyo to Kyoto is now a matter of a dozen hours or so; in the seventh and eighth centuries an ordinary journey between the Kwan to and Nara, or the constantly shifting Japanese capital before the Nara epoch, not unfrequently occupied as many weeks. Nor was an ordinary journey always possible. The effects of freshets and inundations had as often as not to be allowed for, and impracticable fords, broken bridges, and impassable tracks not infrequently delayed communications for the best part of six months. One thing was plain,—the conveyance of heavy taxes in kind from these quarters to the central store­houses was next door to an impossibility. And this was only one of an intricate complex of difficulties that had to be effectively grappled with before the magnates of the Kwanto could be stripped of that virtual autonomy which they enjoyed as the result of their geographical situation.

After the nomination of governors to these impracticable districts the Reformers concentrated their attention upon quarters more amenable to their immediate control. The second article in the Reform Edict stated that the capital is for the first time to be regulated, and governors appointed for the Home Provinces and districts. Let barriers, outposts, guards, and post-horses, both special and ordinary, be provided, bell tokens made, and mountain (passes) and river (ferries) regulated.’’ The capital was to be divided into wards, each with an alderman for the superintendence of the population and the investigation of criminal matters, with a sort of mayor over the four wards. But these were only regulations for the city that was to be. In Japan at this time there was not one single town in the Chinese sense of the word. On the death of a sovereign—and often on other occasions—the “palace” was abandoned and the Imperial residence transferred to some other of the Imperial manors in what were to be known as the Home Provinces from 646 onward. On one occasion, at least, we find it at Otsu on Lake Biwa, in Omi, first outside the boundary of the Go-Kinai. Even now the palace was roofed with thatch or shingles, and of such frail materials that not so much repairs as rebuilding continued to be necessary at very short intervals. Furthermore there was the idea that death defiled the dwelling where it occurred. So long as the sovereign was merely a patriarchal chief, subsisting on the produce of his own estates, inhabiting the most unpretentious of domiciles, and living in a very simple style, there was no great inconvenience in thus frequently “shifting the capital.” But after the Reform, the new magnificence of the Court, the elaborately organised central administration with its numerous functionaries, its huge granaries and store houses for the reception of taxes in kind, and the other extensive buildings made necessary by the new conditions, caused these removals to lie looked upon with dread by the taxpaying and working part of the population. On several occasions they gave rise to great popular discontent, and this was one of the considera­tions which led to the erection of a real permanent capital at Nara in 710. Then, and not till then, was there any pressing need for “a regulation of the capital.”

The “Home Provinces” was a reproduction of a prominent feature in the administration of the Middle Kingdom. Only, in Japan the inhabitants of the Home Provinces were not at first marked out for the privileges and the special treatment accorded the favoured population in the environs of the Chinese capital. The reason of this is not far to seek. The Reformers felt they needed the strong support of material resources. To obtain these resources from the outlying provinces was easy in China; but if not impossible, at all events exceedingly difficult in Japan, that land of the mountain and the flood. Besides, it was in the Home Provinces that the most dangerous possible rivals and opponents of the new Govern­ment were to be found. Accordingly it was only statesman­like that the Chinese system should here be not so much adopted as adapted to meet the exigencies of the actual situation. And so it came to pass that it was among the peasantry of the Home Provinces that the saying “Better be a thief than a tax-collector” originated. The “barriers” were also borrowed from China, and although at first they may have seemed an unnecessary institution in Japan, they were not long in proving their utility. In the succession war of 671-672 they were found to be of considerable strategic importance, while they soon after that were of great service in dealing with run­away peasants taking refuge in flight from the exactions of the tax-gatherer. The establishment of the post-system, soon destined to become notorious for its abuses, was really a vital necessity, if the new central administration was seriously minded to be a permanent reality.

“(In the Home Provinces) districts of 40 townships are constituted Greater Districts, of from 30 to 4 townships are constituted Middle Districts, and of three or fewer townships are constituted Lesser Districts. For the district authorities of whatever class let there be taken Kuni no Miyakko of unblemished character, such as may fitly sustain the duties of the time ... Let men of solid capacity and intelligence who are skilled in writing and arithmetic be appointed assistants and clerks.”

In the tract of country henceforward to le known as the Home Provinces, a little later on, we find as many as 53 districts, or Gun or Kori. The administrative posts in these would thus provide for a considerable number of the territorial nobility and gentry, who otherwise might have felt inclined to make themselves unpleasant to the reforming Government. It was the policy of the latter to leave the chieftains in the possession of their former titles, for at all times the average Japanese has been extremely fond not merely of honour, but of honours. As the provincial governors were at first strictly prohibited from exercising judicial functions, and were severely reprimanded, if not subjected to more serious punishments, when they presumed to take cognisance of suits, the heads of k6ri still found ample scope for making themselves both feared and respected by the people of their districts. The only innovation in connection with their judicial position was that an appeal from their decisions to the Central Government was now possible. They could no longer levy taxes; that was one of the chief functions of the provincial governor and his staff. But. on the other band, the district governors were encouraged to report any malfeasances or any malpractices on the part of the provincial governor to the central authorities. One outcome of this peculiar situation was that provincial governors were, in spite of themselves, constrained to conciliate the goodwill of their subordinates, the district governors. In 646, the earliest district governors were indeed nominated by the provincial governors. But the provincial governors held their positions for a limited number of years only—sometimes four, and sometimes six,—while the district governor held his office for life, and, as often as not, he transmitted his post to his son or heir. In theory the district governor was responsible to the provincial governor; as a sober matter of fact lie was, if an able man, but slightly under central control. The position of the provincial governor no doubt appeared magnificent; but in the narrower confines of his district, the virtually hereditary district governor was a very much more powerful man than was the provincial governor, who nominally swayed it over half-a-score or a dozen of district governors for a brief term of six years at the outside. And long before these six years were out a combination of his subject district governors might very readily relegate him to obscurity and the meagre fare of the ex-official. The pivot on which the success of the Sinicised administration turned was the provincial governor; and the course of events was soon destined to show that from the conditions and limita­tions imposed upon that functionary, it was only an angel from Heaven, or a man gifted with the preternatural astuteness of Machiavelli’s Prince, that could be exacted to cope succes­fully with the exigencies of the office.

Let us now proceed to a consideration of the remaining two Articles of the Reform Edict:—“III. Let there now be provided for the first time registers of population, books of account, and a system of the receipt and regranting of distribution-land.

“Let every fifty houses be reckoned a township, and in every township let there be one alderman who shall be charged with the superintendence (of the registers) of the population, the direction of the sowing of crops and the cultivation of mulberry trees, the prevention and examination of offences, and the enforcement of the payment of taxes and of forced labour.

“For rice-land, thirty paces (5 feet) in length by twelve paces in breadth shall be reckoned a tan. (The tan would thus be 9,000 feet, or 1,000 square yards. Five tan would thus be equal to a little more than an acre (4,840 square yards). Just before Hideyoshi’s time (1582-1598) the tan was equal to 1,440 square yards. He reduced it to its present extent of 1,200 square yards, approximately a quarter of an acre). Ten tan make one cho. For each tan the tax is two sheaves and two bundles (such as can be grasped in the hand) of rice; for each cho (2 acres) the tax is 22 sheaves of rice. On mountains or in valleys where the land is precipitous, or in remote places where the population is scanty, such arrangements are to be made as may be convenient.

“IV. The old taxes and forced labour are abolished, and a system of commuted taxes instituted. These shall consist of fine silks, coarse silks, and floss silk, all in accordance with what is produced in the locality. For each cho (2 acres) of rice-land the rate is ten feet of fine silk, for four cho (8 acres) one piece forty feet in length In two and a half feet in width. For coarse silk the rate is twenty feet per cho. For cloth the rate is forty feet of the same dimensions as the silk for each cho. Let there be levied separately a commuted house-tax. All houses shall pay each twelve feet of cloth. The extra articles of this tax, as well as salt and offerings, will depend on what is produced in the locality. For horses for public service, let every hundred houses contribute one horse of medium quality. Or if the horse is of superior quality, let one be contributed by every two hundred houses. If the horses have to be purchased the price shall be made up by a payment of twelve feet of cloth, from each house. As to weapons, each person shall contribute a sword, armour, bow and arrows, a flag and a drum. For coolies, the old system, by which one coolie was provided by every thirty houses, is altered, and one coolie is to be furnished from every fifty houses for allotment to the various functionaries. Fifty houses shall be allotted to provide rations for one coolie, and one house shall contribute 22 feet of cloth and 5 sho (545 cubic inches, or about 1/4 of a bushel) of rice in lieu of service.”

Later on in the same year, an instruction was issued ordaining that in granting rice-lands the peasants’ houses should adjoin the land, and that the commuted taxes should be collected from males only. As these latter taxes were paid iu products of female labour, this latter provision implied that the heads, or at least the male members, of families were to be held responsible for the liabilities of their female relatives or dependents.

Land tenure and taxation are no doubt very dry and pro­saic topics. But in any real history of Japan they are subjects that may not be shirked. In fact it is perhaps not too much to say that whoever has mastered them and their bearings upon the social and political development of the country, holds in his hands one of the chief keys to the history of the Empire, for the polity of Japan down to a very recent period has been based upon agriculture almost exclusively. In subsequent chapters much must be said about these subjects of land tenure and of taxation from time to time. Here, after a few very simple but perhaps necessary remarks, we must proceed to deal with the other salient innovations of the Reforming Government.

This new system of land-holding and taxation was simply that of contemporary China transferred to Yamato. The land­tax proper was not a heavy one. A tan of average rice-land was supposed to yield 50 sheaves, and a cho 500 sheaves (equal to 5 koku, or about 25 bushels). In the home provinces, which were subsequently exempted from forced labour and the tax in lieu of forced labour (yo), the land-tax proper was carefully collected. But in the further distant provinces, where difficulties of communication made the trans­port of their produce to the capital almost impossible, the other taxes were regarded as of greater consequence by the central authorities. In certain districts, at least, we find that the land-tax proper, the tax on textiles and similar products, and the forced labour tax stood to each other in the ratio of 3:4: 2. In other words, the land-tax represented no more than a third part of the farmer’s chief liabilities to the Government. Of the remaining 66.6 per cent., 44.4 per cent, were cho, or taxes payable in textiles, and the rest was either corrie work or contributions in lieu of it. Theoretically at least this system of taxation did not appear to be an oppressive one. Practically, however, on account of the abuses that crept into it, it ultimately brought the Empire into anarchy, the Emperor to indigence, and the Imperial power and the central authority to hopeless impotence.

The Reformers next directed their attention to the organisation of a central administration. Forty years before, Shotoku Taishi had made a premature effort to introduce the Court institutions of the Sui dynasty into Japan. For dignitaries and officials below the third rank a system of 12 grades with distinctive caps had been introduced in 604; and an attempt had then been made to define more rigorously that Court etiquette which a French historian has characterised as “le culte de la religion monarchique.’’ But it had had little or no effect upon the clan system. In 647 this system of rank was amended, and in 649 it was still further modified, when nineteen cap­grades were instituted. “In the same month an order was given to the National Doctor, Takamuku no Kuromaro, and the Buddhist priest Bin to establish eight departments of State and one hundred bureaux’’

There is good reason to believe, however, that Bin (who passed away in 653) and Takamuku (who died at the head of an embassy in China in 656) did not live to complete this undertaking. At all events, it is in the Code of Taiho (702) that we meet with the first full account of an organised central administration. Probably, however, the system was completed some time between 662 and 671. We are told that it was then that the Great Council of State (Dajo-Kwan) was established. It was composed of the Dajo-daijin, or Chancellor of the Em­pire, of the Minister of the Left (Sa-daijin) and of the Minister of the Right (U-daijin); while the First Adviser of State (Dai-nagon) was to participate in deliberations, and the Minister of the Nakatsukasa-Sho was to inspect and affix his seal to Imperial Rescripts. Under this Council of State were placed eight Boards,—(1) The Nakatsukasa-Sho (Ministry of the Imperial Household); (2) The Shikibu-Sho (Ministry of Court Ceremonies and of Civil Office); (3) The Jibu-Sho; (4) The Mimbu-Sho (Home Department); (5) The Hyobn-Sho (Ministry of War); (6) The Gyobu-Sho (Ministry of Justice); (7) The Okura-Sho (National Treasury); and (8) The Kunai-Sho (Treasury of Imperial Household). Although this subject is well-nigh as tedious and tiresome as that of land-tenure and taxation, or man millinery, it will be well to reproduce the full details of the functions of these eight Boards as they are given in the Code of 702.

I.—The Nakatsukasa-Sho had to deal with the following matters: (1) Attendance upon the Emperor, tendering Him counsel about His personal affairs; assisting Him in the maintenance of a proper dignity, and in the observance of proper forms of etiquette. (2) The inspection and countersigning of drafts of Imperial Rescripts, and the forms to be observed in making representations to the Emperor. (3) The issuing of Imperial orders in time of war. (4) The reception of addresses to the Emperor. (5) The compilation of the National History. (6) The gazetteer; and the personal status of the Imperial Princesses, and of the maids of honour and Court ladies. (7) The submission to the Emperor's inspection of the census returns, the taxes to he levied, and the lists of priests and nuns in the Empire. (8) The Grand-Empress Dowager, the Empress Dowager, and the Empress. (9) The Imperial archives. (10) The annual expenditure of the Court. (11) The Calendar. (12) Painting. (13) The Physicians in waiting. (14) The maintenance of order in the palace.

It is not difficult to understand how an able man at the head of this Ministry might contrive to make himself a veritable power in the land. Even in certain quarters in Europe Ceremony has been a much more potent thing than Religion, while even now a breach of etiquette sometimes entails graver social penalties upon the offender than flagrant outrages on what is most vital in morality do in the highly moral and comparatively democratic British Empire under the sway of King Edward VII. Now, in Far Eastern lands a dozen cen­turies or so ago, and, indeed, even at the present day, ceremonial is of infinitely greater consequence than it is, or ever has been, in the West,—except perhaps in the Byzantine Empire, at the Court of Spain, or at Versailles in the time of Louis XIV. Whoever fails to grasp the import of this very simple proposition must abandon all hope of understanding much that is of essential importance in the history of China, Japan, and Korea. By far the most important of the Five Chinese Classics in its effects upon society has been the Li or Book of Rites.

(The Five Chinese Classics, properly so called, are (1) The Yih-king, or Book of Changes (by Wan Wang, 1150 n.c.); (2) The Sin­king. or Book of Odes, containing Ballads of various dates from 1800 to 500 b.c.; (3) The Shuking, or Book of History (from Chaos till 721 b.c.); (4) The Chun-Tsu or Spring and Autumn Annals, written by Confucius, and giving what purported to be the History of the Empire from 721 to 479 B.C.; and (5) The Li or Book of Rites. Besides these, the “Four Books” go to make up the full complement of the Nine Classics. Three of these four—the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Confucian Analects, were compiled by pupils or followers of Confucius, while the fourth, the Works of Mencius, is by a subsequent disciple of that philosopher. Inasmuch as these works continued to be the oracles of Japanese savants for ages, European students of Japanese history will do well to bear this prosaic scrap of Chinese literary history in mind.)

We have seen the “yellow rolls” of this book (the Li or Book of Rites) in the hands of the great reformers, Kamatari and Naka-no-Oye, when they were sedulously weaving the web of their conspiracy before 645. Said to have been compiled by a Duke of Chow in the 12th century b.c., it has since then served Chinamen as the guide and rule for the regulations of all the actions and relations of their lives. “In ceremonial is summed up the whole soul of the Chinese,” says Callery, “and to my mind the Book of Rites is the most exact and complete monograph that this nation can give of itself to the rest of the world. Its affections, if it has any, are satisfied by ceremonial; its duties arc fulfilled by means of ceremonial; its virtues and vices are recognised by ceremonial; the natural relations of created beings are essentially connected with ceremonial,—in a word, for it ceremonial is man, the man moral, the man politic, the man religious in their numberless relations with the family, society, the State, morality and religion.”

To apply this language in all its sweeping compass to Japan would be highly unjust; for among the Japanese people the natural affections not only exist, but are exceedingly strong. But, on the other hand, it must be frankly conceded that Chinese ceremonial has done much to regulate and modify the expression of the natural feelings among the Japanese. Towards the end of the sixteenth century we find Valegnani writing to Acquaviva, the Jesuit General in Rome, to the effect that “the most austere Order in the Church has no novitiate so severe as is the apprenticeship to good-breeding that is necessary in Japan.” The severity of this apprenticeship in forms and ceremonies was no doubt salutary in many respects; but withal the training bad the defects of its qualities in abundant measure. It is easy to perceive that the functionaries charged with the office of “advising the Emperor on His personal matters, and of assisting Him in the maintenance of a proper dignity and in the observance of proper forms of etiquette” could do much to curb all free action and initiative on the part of a sovereign not possessed of an exceptional share of force of character. Presently we shall find that the throne of Japan was occupied by an oppressive tyrant. But the tyrant was not the Emperor. It was Chinese ceremonial. Strong Emperors were now and then wont to abdicate, if not for the express purpose, at all events for the real purpose of freeing themselves from the despotism of this ceremonial, and of, not reigning, but really ruling the Empire.

Two of the remaining seven Ministries were also very much occupied with the details of ceremonial. These were:—

II.—The Shikibu-Sho, charged with (1) Keeping the lists of civil officials; (2) Appointments to office and rank, and the rewarding of meritorious services; (3) The maintenance of schools, and examinations; (4) The appointment of stewards in the houses of Imperial Princes, and in those of officials above the 4th rank; (5) Pensions and donations; and (6) Official precedence at Court functions.

This Shikibu-Sho was complemented by—

III.—The Jibu-Sho, which dealt with (1) The names of officials and the marriage and succession of officials above the 6th rank; (2) Omens; (3) Deaths, funerals, the granting of posthumous rank, or donations of money to the family of the deceased; (4) Anniversaries of the demise of the former Emperor, and the record of the names of all former Emperors, so that none of those names shall be used by any succeeding Emperor or any subject (tabu); (5) Rendering of homage by foreign countries; (6) Adjudication of disputes about precedence among various families; (7) Music; (8) Registration of Buddhist temples and religieux. (9) Court reception of foreigners; (10) Imperial tombs, and their attendants.

One more Ministry was occupied with Court Affairs. This was—

VIII.—The Kunai-Sho, superintending (1) The rice-lands for the supply of the Imperial family; (2) Harvesting on the Imperial domains; (3) The presentation of rare delicacies by subjects; (4) The Imperial kitchen, palace repairs, breweries, Court ladies, Court servants, Court smiths, the Imperial ward­robe and the like; and (5) The lists of Imperial Princes or Princesses from the second to the fourth generation inclusive.

It will be observed that none of these four Ministries brought either the sovereign or the officials into contact with the people at large. A full half of the elaborate machinery of the Government was thus almost .exclusively occupied with the affairs of a select aristocracy of perhaps less than 10,000 indivi­duals all told in a population of some four millions. To attend to the interests of the nation at large was the work of the four remaining departments. These were—

IV.     —The Mimbu-Sho, dealing with (1) The census; (2) Forced labour; (3) Exemption from forced labour, and rewarding the meritorious poor, or relieving the distressed; (4) Bridges, roads, harbours, lakes, farms, mountains, rivers, etc.; (5)   Estimation and collection of taxes in products and textiles, to the disbursing of the national funds, and estimates of national expenditure; and (6) Granaries, and land-tax in grain.

V.      —The Hyobu-Sho, in charge of (1) the rosters of military officers, their examinations, their rank and their commissions; (2) The dispatch of troops; (3) Weapons, guards, fortifications, and beacon fires; (4) Pastures, studs, and cattle; (5) Postal stations; (6) Arsenals, and mechanics employed in them; (7) Military music and private means of water transportation; and (8) The training of hawks and dogs.

VI.     —The Gyobu-Sho conducted criminal trials, and took cognisance of suits for debt.

VII.   —The Okura-Sho had charge of (1) The public accounts; (2) Textile taxes and offerings to the Emperor; (3) Weights and measures; (4) The prices of commodities; (5) The mint; (6)  Lacquer-ware manufacture, weaving, and other industries.

One unfortunate thing in connection with these Ministries was that although theoretically equal in rank, all the prestige of office went to the functionaries employed in those of them which had no connection with the real national interests in the broader sense of the term. The chief function of the Mimbu-Shoi (Home Office) and of the Okura-Sho (National Treasury) was to see to it that means should be provided for the adequate support of the Court and the courtiers, who filled the posts in the favoured departments, I., II., III., and VII., reserved for the jeunesse dorée of Sinicised Japan. The administration of justice, which tends more and more to become the most important function of the modern State, was never of any great consequence in Old Japan, where every one appreciated the wisdom of agreeing with his adversary quickly lest worse betide. As for the War Department (Hydbu-Sho), in 702 a.d. it was the very reverse of what it, together with the Ministry of Marine, is in Japan in 1909. At present, the War Office and the Admiralty are, of all Ministries, by far the strongest in the Empire. When a party government does by any strange hap make its appearance on the political stage, the Ministers of War and of Marine can afford to regard its advent with the utmost insouciance. For the most extreme of party politicians readily and unhesitatingly admit that the affairs of the Army and the Navy do not fall within the sphere of party politics, but are the exclusive concern of the Commander-in-Chief, his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Japan. On none in the public service of Japan are titles of nobility, high rank, and still more substantial emoluments showered with more liberal hand than upon the great captains and the great sailors of the Empire. In China, on the other hand, the military man is, if not a pariah, at all events an exceptional barbarian, whom policy makes it advisable to treat with a certain amount of gracious, albeit semi-contemptuous, condescension. In Old Japan it was this Chinese view of the case that prevailed for centuries after the Reform of 645. To guileless Europeans who have heard so much of the Samurai and of Bushido,—the Way of the Warrior,—this statement may very well come as something of a shock. But it is simple, sober, literal truth. It was the institutions of the Tang Dynasty that the Japanese statesmen were then endeavouring to introduce and establish in the Empire in spite of the fact that the historical development of the country had been vastly different to that of the Middle Kingdom, and that the natural features of Japan, her social economy, and the racial peculiarities of her population made the adoption of these institutions exceedingly hazardous unless they were adopted with modifica­tions considerable enough to convert their adoption into an adaptation. In the long course of centuries the force of circumstances and the appearance of a few men of genius strong enough to shake themselves free from the trammels of a mecha­nical conventionality and to place their trust in the first principles of common sense and mother wit have served to rescue Japan from the abyss to which the Reform of 645 once bade fair to consign her. But for that she might very well now be a variant of the Empire of Korea.

“The people in the Empire (of China),” says the Liu Hu, “were divided into their classes, each of which was bound to keep to its own vocation; those who studied letters and arms were Gentlemen (Shi); those who devoted themselves to agriculture were Farmers (No); those who designed and made utensils were Artisans (Ko); and those who purchased and sold goods were Merchants (Sho). The Artisans and Merchants should not attend to the work of the Gentlemen; the salaried men shall not seek the profit of the inferior people.” Down to a time well within the memory of the living we find this Chinese organisation of society in Japan, into which it was originally introduced shortly after the Great Reform of 645, only with a difference. The gentleman in China was before all things a scholar, for the soldier and his calling have ever been held in comparatively slight esteem by the peace­loving gentry of the Middle Kingdom. In feudal Japan, on the other hand, it was the samurai who were the gentlemen. In other words, the gentleman in this Empire was, before all filings, a soldier. He might indeed by some lucky chance be a man of wide scholarship, but, as often as not, he was as guiltless of learning as the father of Gawain Douglas, the Bishop of Dunkeld, was. In any case it was in the sword and not in the pen that he placed his trust. The samurai, who came to constitute at least a full ninety-five per cent, of the gentlemen of Japan, were, in short, a highly privileged military caste. But the creation of a privileged military class was one of the very last things that the Reformers aimed at. In the great succession war of 672 we find 20,000 Owari troops acting under the orders of the provincial governor; and provincial governors occupied no very high status in the official hierarchy of the Court. In the reign of the Empress Jito (686-697) the national army was a strictly conscript one, one-fourth of the able-bodied freemen being selected for a service of three years, and a few years later this proportion was increased to one-third. A privileged military class was an outcome of feudalism; and the appearance of feudalism in Japan was contemporary with its appearance in Europe and proceeded from similar causes. In the West the local military chiefs found their opportunity in the dissolution of Charlemagne’s Empire under his incapable successors; in Japan it was the breakdown of the Reform machinery that made the pen of no effect, and the sword all-powerful.

What the Reformers were really endeavouring to do was to introduce the Chinese social and administrative system into Japan. Now, the Chinese law had for its very object the suppression of feudalism and the prevention of its reappearance. The problem of the Japanese statesman was to abolish the clan system, and to make the social unit not the tribe or sept, but the family. So much they accomplished; but into the national house thus emptied, swept, and garnished entered the evil spirit, with his attendant devils, of feudalism, and the last state of the Empire became worse than the first.

In China, the subjects of the Emperor were divided into two layers. The great bulk of the population consisted of peasants whose sole business was to keep the peace and to till the fields. Their only concern with governmental matters was to pay their taxes. Above them were the officers, for whose support they were to work, and who, on their part, were to guide and protect the moiling black-haired millions. However, these officers constituted no aristocracy of birth. Every Chinese school­boy had, and has, on his lips the old query which answers itself in the negative, “How can kings, princes, generals, and councillors have their breed (i.e. be limited to certain families)?” There was no post, however high in the service of the Emperor, which the son of the humblest peasant in the land might not aspire to fill, provided he could give satisfactory proof of capa­city in the examination halls. It was, and is, a case of la carrière ouverte aux talens, the talents being almost exclusively literary, however. Whatever may be the faults of this Chinese examination system, it has perhaps contributed more than any other single factor to the stability of the Middle Kingdom. Among other results it induced the people to cover the Empire with a network of schools and colleges at their own expense.

The Japanese statesmen made a cardinal mistake in omitting to reproduce this institution in its entirety in their country. They did, indeed, go some little way in an endeavour to copy it. A university had been established by the Emperor Tenchi (Prince Naka no Oye) in 668, and it was re-organised in 702. But it provided for no more than 400 students, against the 8,000 in the capital of Tang. As the curriculum extended over nine years, and failures in the examinations were frequent, it is questionable whether as many as a score of graduates received official appointments in any one year. And then the students were generally chosen from among the children of families not below the fifth rank, although bright boys from families of sixth, seventh, and eighth ranks might be admitted. At last, in 821, only families of the three highest ranks could furnish candidates for admission to the Literary Department. Even the Provincial Schools, with their 50, 40, or 20 students, were strictly aristocratic, the pupils being taken from the families of the provincial officials or the district governors. All these institutions were official; there was not the slightest encouragement for the establishment of schools by the people on their own initiative. In Japan it was emphatically held that “kings, princes, generals, and councillors” could, and did, “ have their breed.”

In short, even after the Reform, the constitution of Japanese society continued to be not a whit less aristocratic than before. We are told that a new nobility of rank and office was created, and so much is indeed true. But the new nobility was merely the old one arrayed in new caps of nineteen different colours. The text of the piece was largely modified, if not entirely rewritten, the cast was considerably changed, but the company continued to lie composed of the same actors. In this vital respect 645 is vastly different from 1868, when the officials of the Bakufu were relegated to obscurity, and an entirely fresh set of men took charge of the fortunes of the State.

In old Yamato the nobles were variously known as Omi, Muraji, Kuni no Miyakko, Tomo no Miyakko, and Inaki. When stripped of their powers and resources quâ Omi, Muraji, Kuni no Miyakko, Tomo no Miyakko, and Inaki, they were not deprived of these titles; and for a full generation these designations continued in current use. At last, in 684, the Emperor, Temmu, proceeded to deal with them. He re-arranged the old clan and group titles into the eight classes of Mabito, Asomi, Sukune, Imiki, Michi no Shi, Omi, Muraji, and Inaki, thus degrading the two highest of the old titles to a very low position. Mabito was reserved for Imperial Princes; former Omi were mostly promoted to Asomi, and former Muraji to Sukune, while not individuals but whole households were gratified with the lower ranks,—batches of thirty, or forty, or fifty households at the same time. The net effect of this was to vulgarise the old titles; and it very soon became apparent that they were impotent to survive the rude process of wholesale cheapening to which they had been subjected. What must have greatly contributed to their outward euthanasia was the fact that the possessors of the old territorial and group-head titular distinctions were at the same time he holders of either rank or office, or of both, in the new order of things. The old titular designations were nothing more than empty names of honours; the higher grades of official rank, and official employment, carried with them substantial emoluments, and it is only the most stupidly belated of conservatives that persistently keep on clutching at the shadows of forms from which all material reality has departed for ever and for aye. The nobles now preferred to be addressed by the name of the office they happened to occupy, or by the degree of rank which they happened to hold.

If we interpret honours—not honour,—as Falstaff did in the currency of seventh-century Japan, we shall find that they were somewhat substantial. At that date this Empire had but little metallic currency of its own,—that was to come with the year 708,—everything of any consequence was estimated in cho and tan, which we will translate into acres and fractions thereof. Certain individuals of the blood imperial received estates varying in extent from 160 acres to half that amount. The number of these was limited, and their position, of course, exceptional. After this, in the Land Provisions of the Code of Taiho came the assignments of land made to holders of the higher ranks. At the Reform, nineteen grades of rank had been established. Under the Emperor Temmu the number of these grades had been increased to as many as forty-eight. By the time of the compilation of the Taiho Code (702) they had been reduced to thirty, distributed into ten classes, the first three and the last two of which comprised two grades each, the intervening five classes being distributed into four grades apiece,—although about this distribution there seems to be a certain amount of uncertainty. Now the relative importance of these grades may be inferred from an inspection of the revenue assigned for the support of their holders. Holders of a—

Senior First Class received 160 acres.

Junior ........................          148  „

Senior Second Class received 120 „

Junior .............................    108  „

Senior Third Class received 80   „

Junior    ...........................     68   „

Senior Fourth Class received 48  „

Junior  .................................40   „

Senior Fifth Class received 24 acres.

Junior .............................     16   „

A female of corresponding rank received two-thirds of a male’s share.

The first five of the ten classes, whose children, it will be remembered, could claim admittance to the University, thus formed a sort of superior aristocracy. For the support of such as held ranks of the last five classes no land was specifically assigned; they received their emoluments from the public trea­sury in silk or textiles or in similar products of taxation. All ten classes alike were immune from the attentions of the collectors of revenue. In other words, they formed a highly privileged class or caste, into which it was next-door to impossible for a man of the people to force his way. In this respect at least Japan, much to her ultimate disadvantage, did not copy China.

Thus the income of an aristocrat depended mainly upon the grade of rank he held; and this perhaps partly accounts for the intensity of the struggle and the eagerness of the scramble for these grades among the courtiers. In addition to these ranking comes, there were others, however. Ex officio, and independent of the particular grade he held, the Chancellor of the Empire received 80 acres; the two Great Ministers (Left and Right) 60 acres each; and the Dainagon 40 acres.

A highly responsible position was that of the Viceroy of Dazaifu, who had charge of the nine provinces of Kyushu, to­gether with the islands of Iki and Tsushima. In many respects he was autocratic. In the British Empire a Viceroy of India receives more than twice as much as, and a Governor of Bombay or Madras considerably more than, a British Prime Minister gets as a salary. But in old Japan, the Viceroy of Dazaifu, being remote from the sacrosanct precincts of the Court, was regarded as a very inferior dignitary. Ex officio he had to be satisfied with an estate of 20 acres,—one-fourth of that of the Chancellor. Of course, he would naturally hold a very high grade of rank, and the emoluments of this would constitute his main source of income. The case of a provincial governor was a replica of that of the Viceroy of Kyushu on a reduced scale. He was usually a holder of a higher fifth-class rank, and as such would hold 24 acres. But ex officio his emoluments were no more than 5.2 acres in a first-class post, while in a fourth-class province they were only 3.2 acres.

Now, inasmuch as the 60 odd provincial governors were the most important functionaries in the Empire, if the Reformed Government was really to be a success, the cheese paring treatment meted out to them was exceedingly short-sighted policy. Every official was desirous of being in the capital if possible; after the foundation of Kyoto at least it came to be a good deal more than what Versailles was in the time of Louis XIV. Service in any provincial post, and especially in a remote provincial post, ultimately came to be regarded as a sort of exile. To readers acquainted with the old Spanish sys­tem of colonial administration (from 1520 to 1820 a.d., and even later in the case of Cuba and the Philippines) the situation can be made tolerably clear in a very few words. Those who sought appointments in the Spanish colonies were mostly courtiers of broken fortunes. It was not the wont of a hidalgo of the sangre azul to betake himself to Mexico, Lima, Santa Fe de Bogota, Buenos Ayres, or, still later, to Manila or Havana, either for the sake of his health or for pleasure. Neither was it for the mere trivial consideration of a paltry salary that a grandee entitled to bask in the sunshine of the Royal presence submitted to the eclipse of a temporary exile. The main inducement was—opportunities. Perquisites, whether semi-legal or utterly illegal, were not perhaps so numerous, and were certainly much less magnificent, in the provinces of old Japan than they were in the Castilian vice-royalties beyond the Atlantic. But, notwithstanding, there were perquisites,—sufficiently considerable in the eyes of impecunious blue-blooded courtiers bent on a speedy return to the capital furnished with substantial arguments in favour of their own advancement there.

Besides Rank-land (I-den) and Office-land (Shoku-bun-den) an astute official often contrived to add to his resources by obtaining a Ko-den—that is, an estate granted for public merit. Of these estates there were four categories. For the very highest public merit, a man received lands to be held by him and his heirs for ever, free of all taxes. Another description of Ko-den—for high public merit—was transmissible to the third generation, another descended only to the second generation, while the lowest of all descended only to a son or a daughter. In addition to all this, a courtier might be gratified with a Shi-den, or an estate created by the special fiat of the sovereign. In these tax-free estates, which continued to be added to and expanded at the expense of neighbouring occupiers, the aristocrats fortunate enough to own them had the material bases necessary for the foundation of great families and powerful houses. Pliny assures us that it was the latifundia which ruined Italy. These tax-free estates did not perhaps ruin Japan, but they contributed more than any other one single factor to the decay and downfall of the Imperial authority and of the central government in Sinicised Japan. The categories of exemption above given were the most prominent among the original ones. But they were not the only ones, for in course of time we find a landholder could legally set the tax-collector at defiance on any one of eight and twenty different kinds of title-deeds. From the later Valois Kings and Henry IV down to 1789 there was a constant endeavour to escape the incidence of the faille in France on many pretexts and by an infinity of devices, with the ultimate result that nearly the whole burden of taxation had to be borne by the indigent, poverty- stricken, toiling poor. The economic history of France from 1560 to 1789 and the economic history of Japan from 650 to 1150 a.d. have a strong generic likeness, with striking specific differences, while the remedies for the malady in the two poli­ties were so different as to be antithetic. In France the cure for the disease was the abolition of feudalism; it was in the twelfth century that the feudal system became the only possible system in Japan.

The succeeding chapters will be largely occupied with a consideration of the causes that led to the necessary rise of this feudal system at the expense of the central government, and in the course of this discussion there will be ample opportunity for dealing incidentally with the minuter details of the system introduced by the Reformers of 645 and developed by their successors. Here, to obviate the danger of not being able to see the wood on account of the trees, we shall content ourselves with recapitulating the main features of the new polity in its broadest outlines.

The Yamato sovereign was no longer to be merely the head of the chief clan in Japan, with a feeble control over the other great clan chieftains, and with no direct control over the ependents of these. Henceforth he was really to be the Emperor of Japan. Every rood of the soil was theoretically supposed to have been surrendered to him,—that is to say, the theory of eminent domain was now effectually established. The land thus surrendered was then distributed to the subjects of the Emperor in approximately equal portions. The holders of these portions were subject to the national burden of taxation (of which there were three main categories). Taxes could be levied by none but the duly constituted Imperial authorities. The members of the old landed tribal aristocracy and the aristocracy of Group or Corporation Heads, while allowed to retain their titles of honour as such, were deprived of all emoluments. But they were formed into a new aristocracy of Court rank, in virtue of which they received tax-free estates or house fiefs, while the personnel of the Central Government and of the Viceregal and Provincial Governments came mainly from their ranks. Others of them found employment as district governors or district officials, such offices ultimately becoming hereditary and all of them carrying with them modest emoluments in the shape of land. For a man of the people to force his way into this privileged caste was exceedingly difficult, if not absolutely impossible. In 682 Teminu Tenno issued the following edict: “Let the lineage and character of all candidates for office be always inquired into before a selection is made. None whose lineage is insufficient are eligible for appointments, even although their character, conduct, and capacity may be unexceptionable.”

Thus, a practically hereditary governing caste was con­stituted, to which admission was denied to all except the descendants of the old clan chieftains and of the former Group Heads, together with those of the “ new men ” who had been fortunate enough to distinguish themselves on the winning side in the great succession war of 671-2. It is questionable whether the caste as thus defined embraced as much as a half per cent, of the total population of the Empire.

The great bulk of the non-privileged classes of the nation consisted of free peasants, occupying approximately equal little holdings, for which they had to pay taxes in cereals, in silk, and in textile products, while they were subject to the burden of forced labour when not drawn in the conscription. In the latter case, they escaped all corvee work. But during their three years of service, with the exception of the small number drafted to the capital for service in the Imperial Guard there, the men did not entirely abandon their original occupations. They formed, not so much a standing army as a national militia, receiving a training which was perfunctory at best, as militia training is wont to be. They certainly constituted no privileged military class; in fact the only privilege they seem to have enjoyed was their exemption from the corrée during the limited time they were amenable to service (three years).

Below the free plebeians stood the slaves. So far as can be made out from an inspection of the very defective census and taxation records of the years following 700 a.d., the servile population was not at all a considerable one. It amounted, so far as we can judge, to something between 150,000 and 200,000,—about five per cent, of the 3,000,000 or 3,500,000 subjects of the Emperor. The slaves fell into the two categories of private and public. Apart from such as were relatives of the family of the owner, the former could be bought and sold like so many oxen or horses. On their account the head of the household owning them received an allowance of land (one-third of that allotted to a free-born subject), for the taxes on which he was held responsible. The public slaves were in a much more favoured position. They received as much land as a freeman, although they could not deal with it so freely as the latter, and they were exempt from all forced labour apart from their specific tasks. Possibly this arose from the fact that nearly all the public slaves were to be found in the home provinces, where ultimately no forced labour was exacted.

It now only remains to consider the attitude of the new Government towards the various cults then competing for official recognition. Down to the end of the sixth century the “ Way of the Gods ” had been one of the chief concerns, if not the chief concern, of the head of the State. The introduction of Buddhism and of the ethical systems of China had greatly impaired its prestige. How things stood in 642, three years before the great coup d'état, becomes tolerably plain from the following quaint passages in the Nihongi:—

“5th month, 25th day.—The Ministers conversed with one another, saying:—‘In accordance with the teachings of the village hafuri (Shinto priests), there have been in some places horses and cattle killed as a sacrifice to the Gods of the various (Shinto) shrines, in others frequent changes of the market­places, or prayers to the River-Gods. None of these practices have had hitherto any good result.’ Then Soga no Ohomi answered and said:—‘The Mahayana Sutra ought to be read by way of extract in the temples, our sins repented of, as Buddha teaches, and thus with humility should rain be prayed for.’ ”

“27th day.—In the South Court of the Great Temple, the images of Buddha and of the Bosatsu, and the images of the Four Heavenly Kings were magnificently adorned. A multitude of priests, by humble request, read the ‘Mahayana Sutra.’ On this occasion Soga no Oho-omi held a censer in his hands, and having burnt incense in it, put up a prayer.

“ 28th day.—A slight rain fell.

“29th day.—The prayers for rain being unsuccessful, the reading of the Sutra was discontinued.

“8th month, 1st day.—The Empress made a progress to the river-source of Minabuchi. Here She knelt down and prayed, worshipping towards the four quarters, and looking up to Heaven (i.e., in the Chinese fashion). Straightway there was thunder, and a great rain, which eventually fell for five days and plentifully bedewed the Empire.

“Hereupon the peasantry throughout the Empire cried with one voice ‘Banzai,’ and said, ‘A sovereign of exceeding virtue! ’ ”

At this time the fortunes of Shinto had fallen upon evil days. It will be remembered that Kamatari, the Nakatomi chieftain, whose hereditary position entitled him to the headship of the old national cult, positively and persistently refused to assume the office. The Emperor Kotoku (G45-654), virtually the nominee of Kamatari, “despised the Way of the Gods.” In 661 we hear of the graves round a Shinto shrine being summarily cut down to make room for a new palace. Under Tenchi Tenno, Shinto recovered somewhat; and in Temmu Tenno’s time (672-686) it was again held in a fair measure of official consideration. It is then that we meet with the first really historical notice of the Great (National) Purification (Oho-harahe),—one of the most important and most solemn ceremonies of the old cult, while we hear of the celebration of many Shinto functions and festivals in the course of the fourteen years of this reign. But Shinto suffered shrewdly from a lack of substantial endowments; and so was never in a position to make itself either much feared, or to become at all formidable to the ruling authorities. Furthermore it had no code of morality; and it said little or nothing about a future life. A half-yearly Great General Purification served to settle matters effectually for the nation at large for the space of six months; and individuals could easily arrange their own private scores with the Gods on very easy terms. It was just the spiritual counterpart of the general half-yearly house­cleaning in certain provincial municipalities on which the swordgirt police of the present day insist, and which they superintend with all the dignified severity of demeanour such a very grave and serious function demands.

Buddhism stood on a very different footing. Sufficient has already been said to indicate that the edition of Buddhism which came to Japan and obtained the devoted, if not the very devout, support of the Soga would have infallibly been repudiated by the founder of the religion, for Buddha no less than Jesus of Nazareth has had only too abundant reasons to pray to be saved from many of his professed disciples. As has been said, to Shotoku Taishi Buddhism was evidently a religion of the rational moral sense,—a religion not only of obligation or of fear, but of gratitude for the receipt of blessings, if not unsought for, at all events undeserved. But to most of his contemporaries Buddhism was simply a splendidly easy device for obtaining temporal and perhaps everlasting prosperity, for dodging the Devil or Devils, and escaping the pains and penalties of the various Hells. “Do right for the sake of doing right; don’t do right for the expectation of a reward,”— this was no accepted maxim of conduct among the generality of the professed Buddhists of old Japan, any more than it is among the generality of professing modern Christians. The continental religion at first, at least, was valuable not for supplying a rule or rules of conduct, so much as a new devil­dodging device, and a means of securing material prosperity or evading disaster both in this life and in that which is to come. Buddhism made its appeal to the ignorant vulgar by its magicians and exorcists, by its living saints in the flesh who were supposed to possess strong Court interest with the dignitaries of the ghostly world, by the gorgeousness of its temples and the solemn pomp of its ritual observances. Yet in spite of all this it held within its embrace higher and loftier elements that could do, and did do, much for the culture and civilisation of Japan. But certain of the keener intellects in the official world judged not unreasonably or unrightly that they had good reasons for looking upon its progress with distrust and uneasiness. For one thing it had what Shinto never had,—a strong and evergrowing organised priesthood and a body of religieux who stood apart and separate from the bulk of the population, and whose interests were those of a special caste, likely to clash with those of the rulers and the people at large upon occasion. If virtue could look for such munificent rewards both in this and the future life, and if virtue was more and more to come to be identified with the tendering of a due reverence to the Three Precious Things,— Buddha, the Law, and the Priesthood,—the officials may well have felt that the advent of an Imperium in Imperio was something more than a mere possibility. Accordingly the more far-sighted among the legislators were quickly at work enacting what corresponded to our Statutes of Mortmain. For example, it is plainly laid down in the Code of 702 that no gifts or sales of land should be made to temples, while individual priests or nuns were prohibited from holding real estate. But both provisions were more honoured in the breach than in the observance, for in old Japan, as elsewhere, the enacting and the enforcing of a statute were occasionally vastly different things. Before this, Temmu Tenno (672-686) had taken means to curtail the holdings of the temples; yet when he fell ill and felt his end to be approaching we find him making extensive donations not only in personalty but in real property to the Church. In ante-Reform Japan a tremendous amount of the national resources was consumed in the erection of mausolea, and on funerals generally. In 646 this abuse was grappled with pretty effectually, and in less than a quarter of a century afterwards mausolea ceased to be constructed, while a funeral no longer involved the surviving relatives in financial ruin. But the expenditure on the occasion of a death was now to a great extent deflected into another channel. It came to be the Buddhist religieux that profited mostly at such times. Instead of being squandered upon tombs, it was upon the erection of gorgeous fanes and the casting of gigantic idols that the wealth of the empire was presently lavished. For this the nation got a certain, if not indeed an adequate, return. Apart from its ethical and spiritual influence upon the people, Buddhism did much to stimulate the artistic instincts of the Japanese. From the mausolea the nation had got no return whatsoever.

Under Jito Tenno (686-697) the 46 temples of 622 a.d. had increased to 545. Although It was a far cry from this number to the 11,037 fanes of the year of the Mongol invasion (1281), yet it serves to show that the advance of Buddhism had not been inconsiderable dur­ing the two generations subsequent to the death of its great patron, Sogn no Mumako. In 690 we hear of a “retreat" participated in by 3.363 priests of the seven metropolitan (Nara) temples. Each had thus the population of a considerable village.

It was not until Tokugawa times that the Buddhist canon was translated into Japanese. Hence a knowledge of Chinese was indispensable to the priests, and so the leaders in the old Japanese Church were generally well acquainted with the classical books of the Middle Kingdom. There does not seem to have been any hostility between them and the laymen who made a specialty of the study of Chinese literature, such as prevailed during the Tokugawa age. Bin was by no means the only ecclesiastic whose services were enlisted by the authorities in consequence of his intimate acquaintance with Chinese institutions. This would naturally tend to make the superior priesthood respected by statesmen who continued to draw their inspiration from the ethical and political philosophy of the Chinese Empire. This formed the chief subject of the curriculum in the University, into which institution, however. Buddhism found no admittance. What perhaps contributed in no small measure to prevent any clash between Buddhist priests and lay literati was that the latter never secured the material resources necessary for the maintenance of a caste. Fashionable as was the study of Chinese letters at Court and in aristocratic circles, proficiency in these letters brought but little advantage to the scholar, either of plebeian or of comparatively humble birth. It is questionable whether the total combined endowments of the University and of all the other educational institutions in old Japan were equal to those of an average second-class Buddhist fane. These endowments, too, meagre as they were, were frequently woefully mismanaged. In addition to these, we hear of occasional grants being made to meritorious savants, but these were generally so scanty as to be little better than doles. Only on three occasions in the course of centuries do we find men outside the favoured ring of courtiers raising themselves to the highest Ministerial office mainly by their scholarship.

Kibi no Mabi (692-775): Sugawara no Michizane (847-903); Fujiwara no Arihira (891-970).

Thus what was the almost general rule in China was the glaring exception in Japan. In the former country there was a strong and sometimes an all­powerful body of literati, with special vested interests of their own, whom it was extremely perilous to slight or to offend. In Japan there was no such body. A reputation for scholarship did indeed greatly enhance the prestige of a Japanese statesman; but his claim to office rested not upon his learning, but upon his descent and his family connections. Small wonder, then, that the Fujiwara house could count so many “ men of distinction,” for the Fujiwara very carefully saw to it that outsiders of any real ability should never be in a position to compete with them, or to contest their claims to “distinction.”

In fine, then, Chinese literature was what mainly occupied the attention of aristocratic circles; and to these circles, and to the abler Buddhist priests, its study was confined for generations. The upper classes tended more and more to regulate their lives and their conduct by Chinese ideas. It was only gradually that these filtered down to the people below. Buddhism was also mainly a cult of the upper classes, although great pains were taken to diffuse it among the people at large. It was even used as a weapon of political propaganda among the wild and warlike Hayato of Southern Kyushu, and the equally fierce and intractable Emishi of the North. To the former Buddhist missionaries were sent from Dazaifu in 692, while we meet with several notices of Emishi, turned Buddhist priests, being rewarded for meritorious work among their turbulent and savage fellow-countrymen. But withal, down to about 800 a.d. the common people appear to have remained wedded to the old aboriginal cult of Shinto. At Court and in official and aristocratic circles it was still recognised, if not very zealously or substantially encouraged. But inasmuch as it had no special priestly caste, no moral code, nothing to say about a future life, no Heaven, and, perhaps still more important, no Hell, and no substantial endowments, it was, in the nature of things, bound to go down before the lately introduced continental cult. However, the Japanese have been at all times prone to “take their good thing wherever they find it”; and the lurking suspicion that there might be some benefits to be procured from the practice of the old national cult after all, restrained even the most devout of Buddhists from making war upon it. In comparatively modern times it has proved itself to be possessed of great potentialities as an instrument of government; and the more astute states­men of a Sinicised Japan may very well have perceived that it could, on occasion, be utilised to serve their ends to very good purpose.

One item, but this an all-important one, remains to be considered in this chapter, now far was the position of the sovereign affected by the new doctrines imported from China? The Emperor in China was the Viceregent of Heaven, and held his throne by his Virtue or Virtues. When he failed in Virtue, there was a pretext for any subject, powerful enough to do so, to depose him and to assume his place; the usurper or the new sovereign likewise basing his title on his Virtue. There was no doctrine of right to the throne by hereditary divine descent, such as there is even now, and was then, in Japan. At all times it has been the wont of Chinese sovereigns to attribute national disasters and mishaps to their own lack of Virtue, and on the other hand the statesmen and warriors of Meiji are constantly found asserting that their efforts have been crowned by success merely on account of the Virtue of the Emperor of Japan. But there is no reason to believe that language of this nature was in use in Japan, either by ruler or subject, before 600 a.d. The earliest authentic instance of the enunciation of this Virtue theory is to be found in the so-called “Laws” of Shotoku Taishi, issued in 604. After the Reform of 645, language which implies a partial adoption of it at least is of comparatively frequent occurrence. But, at the same time, the native theory of hereditary descent from divine ancestors is not abandoned; indeed, we now and then find the two vastly different theories implied in the wording of one and the same decree. The truth would seem to be that the Japanese statesmen occasionally made the sovereign talk in the conventional language of the Chinese Court, a circumstance that is not at all strange when we remember that in most things Japan was then sitting as a humble disciple at the feet of China. But the “Virtue theory,” which had served to justify so many revolutions and dynastic changes in the Middle Kingdom, was never pushed to its logical consequences in the Island Empire. Here, although its adoption may have been implied by the use of certain phrases and formulae, it was never taken as anything more serious than ornamental trappings which might enhance the dignity of the ruler. It has never been used to justify the subversion of a dynasty, for from the beginnings of history until now there has been no more than one dynasty in Japan. On this circumstance the Japanese reflect with pride; and it seems to have excited the envy of certain Chinese Emperors. In 984, the monk Fujiwara Chonen was very graciously received at the Court of the first Sung monarch. ‘‘His Majesty, understanding that the Kings of Japan had borne but one family name for generation after generation, and that all the Ministers’ offices were hereditary in certain families, said to the Prime Minister: ‘These are island barbarians, and yet their dynasty goes back to remote antiquity, whilst their Ministers also inherit office in an unbroken succession. This is simply the ancient way of doing. The Tang Dynasty’s Empire was dismembered, and the Five Dynasties of Liang, Chow, etc., enjoyed even a more limited dominion. It is sad to think how few of our official families can boast of a long hereditary line.”

Article II. of the Japanese Constitution of 1889 lays it down that “the Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by Imperial male descendants, according to the provisions of the Imperial House Law.” Article II. of this House Law asserts that “the Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by the Imperial eldest son,” and Article III that  when there is no Imperial eldest son, the Imperial eldest grandson shall succeed, and that when there is neither Imperial eldest son nor any male descendant of his, the Imperial son next in age, and so on in every successive case, shall succeed.” In connection with this an authoritative commentary on the Constitution informs us that “as to the succession to the Throne there have been plain instructions since the time of the first Imperial Ancestor. In obedience to these instructions the Throne has been transmitted to the sons and grandsons of the Emperors....” As we have taken some slight pains to deal with the exact circumstances of each individual succession to the Throne as set forth in the records, we leave it to the intelligence of the reader to decide how far this contention of the able and learned commentator is in accordance with facts.

Thanks to the provisions of the new Imperial House Law the succession question will henceforth decide itself automatically. In former times it certainly did not do so. In the following chapter the circumstances in connection with the accession of each new sovereign will incidentally be considered somewhat minutely.