A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

THE FORTY-THIRD SOVEREIGN, THE EMPRESS GEMMYO (A.D. 708-715)

THE Empress Gemmyo, fourth daughter of the Emperor Tenchi and consort of Prince Kusakabe, was the mother of the Emperor Mommu, whose accession had been the occasion of the first formal declaration of the right of primogeniture (vide Chapter XV). Mommu, dying, willed that the throne should be occupied by his mother in trust for his infant son—afterwards Emperor Shomu.

REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL TO NARA

In ancient times it was customary to change the locality of the Imperial capital with each change of sovereign. This custom, dictated by the Shinto conception of impurity attaching to sickness and death, exercised a baleful influence on architectural development, and constituted a heavy burden upon the people, whose forced labour was largely requisitioned for the building of the new palace. Kotoku, when he promulgated his system of centralized administration, conceived the idea of a fixed capital and selected Naniwa. But the Emperor Tenchi moved to Omi, Temmu to Asuka (in Yamato) and the Empress Jito to Fujiwara (in Yamato). Mommu remained at the latter place until the closing year (707) of his reign, when, finding the site inconvenient, he gave orders for the selection of another. But his death interrupted the project, and it was not until the second year of the Empress Gemmyo's reign that the Court finally removed to Nara, where it remained for seventy-five years, throughout the reigns of seven sovereigns. Nara, in the province of Yamato, lies nearly due south of Kyoto at a distance of twenty-six miles from the latter. History does not say why it was selected, nor have any details of its plan been transmitted. To-day it is celebrated for scenic beauties—a spacious park with noble trees and softly contoured hills, sloping down to a fair expanse of lake, and enshrining in their dales ancient temples, wherein are preserved many fine specimens of Japanese art, glyptic and pictorial, of the seventh and eighth centuries. Nothing remains of the palace where the Court resided throughout a cycle and a half, nearly twelve hundred years ago, but one building, a storehouse called Shoso-in, survives in its primitive form and constitutes a landmark in the annals of Japanese civilization, for it contains specimens of all the articles that were in daily use by the sovereigns of the Nara epoch.

JAPANESE COINS

There is obscurity about the production of the precious metals in old Japan. That gold, silver, and copper were known and used is certain, for in the dolmens,—which ceased to be built from about the close of the sixth century (A.D.)—copper ear-rings plated with gold are found, and gold-copper images of Buddha were made in the reign of the Empress Suiko (605), while history says that silver was discovered in the island of Tsushima in the second year of the Emperor Temmu's reign (674). From the same island, gold also is recorded to have come in 701, but in the case of the yellow and the white metal alike, the supply obtained was insignificant, and indeed modern historians are disposed to doubt whether the alleged Tsushima gold was not in reality brought from Korea via that island. On the whole, the evidence tends to show that, during the first seven centuries of the Christian era, Japan relied on Korea mainly, and on China partially, for her supply of the precious metals. Yet neither gold, silver, nor copper coins seem to have been in anything like general use until the Wado era (708-715).

Coined money had already been a feature of Chinese civilization since the fourth century before Christ, and when Japan began to take models from her great neighbour during the Sui and Tang dynasties, she cannot have failed to appreciate the advantages of artificial media of exchange. The annals allege that in A.D. 677 the first mint was established, and that in 683 an ordinance prescribed that the silver coins struck there should be superseded by copper. But this rule did not remain long in force, nor have there survived any coins, whether of silver or of copper, certainly identifiable as antecedent to the Wado era. It was in the year of the Empress Gemmyo's accession (708) that deposits of copper were found in the Chichibu district of Musashi province, and the event seemed sufficiently important to call for a change of year-name to Wado (refined copper). Thenceforth, coins of copper—or more correctly, bronze—were regularly minted and gradually took the place of rice or cotton cloth as units of value.

It would seem that, from the close of the seventh century, a wave of mining industry swept over Japan. Silver was procured from the provinces of Iyo and Kii; copper from Inaba and Suo, and tin from Ise, Tamba, and Iyo. All this happened between the years 690 and 708, but the discovery of copper in the latter year in Chichibu was on comparatively the largest scale, and may be said to have given the first really substantial impetus to coining. For some unrecorded reason silver pieces were struck first and were followed by copper a few months later. Both were of precisely the same form—round with a square hole in the middle to facilitate threading on a string—both were of the same denomination (one won), and both bore the same superscription (Wado Kaiho, or "opening treasure of refined copper"), the shape, the denomination, and the legend being taken from a coin of the Tang dynasty struck eighty-eight years previously. It was ordered that in using these pieces silver should be paid in the case of sums of or above four mon, and copper in the case of sums of or below three won, the value of the silver coin being four times that of the copper. But the silver tokens soon ceased to be current and copper mainly occupied the field, a position which it held for 250 years, from 708 to 958. During that interval, twelve forms of sen* were struck. They deteriorated steadily in quality, owing to growing scarcity of the supply of copper; and, partly to compensate for the increased cost of the metal, partly to minister to official greed, the new issues were declared, on several occasions, to have a value ten times as great as their immediate predecessors. Concerning that value, the annals state that in 711 the purchasing power of the mon (i.e., of the one-sen token) was sixty go of rice, and as the daily ration for a full-grown man is five go, it follows that one sen originally sufficed for twelve days' sustenance.**

*The ideograph sen signified originally a "fountain," and its employment to designate a coin seems to have been suggested by an idea analogous to that underlying the English word "currency."

**"At the present time the wages of a carpenter are almost a yen a day. Now the yen is equal to 1000 mon of the smaller sen and to 500 mon of the larger ones, so that he could have provided himself with rice, if we count only 500 mon to the yen, for sixteen years on the wages which he receives for one day's labour in 1900." (Munro's Coins of Japan.)