A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

The Emperor Saga (810) had fifty children. From the sixth son downwards they were grouped under the uji of Minamoto. All received appointments to important offices. This precedent was even more drastically followed in the days of the Emperor Seiwa (859-876). To all his Majesty's sons, except the Crown Prince, the uji of Minamoto was given. The best known among these early Minamoto was Tsunemoto, commonly called Prince Rokuson. He was a grandson of the Emperor Seiwa, celebrated for two very dissimilar attainments, which, nevertheless, were often combined in Japan—the art of composing couplets and the science of commanding troops. Appointed in the Shohyo era (931-937) to be governor of Musashi, the metropolitan province of modern Japan, his descendants constituted the principal among fourteen Minamoto houses. They were called the Seiwa Genji, and next in importance came the Saga Genji and the Murakami Genji.*

*That is to say, descended from the Emperor Murakami (947-967). Gen is the Chinese sound of Minamoto and ji (jshi) represents uji. The Minamoto are alluded to in history as either the Genji or the Minamoto. Similarly, hei being the Chinese pronunciation of Taira, the latter are indiscriminately spoken of Taira or Heike (ke = house). Both names are often combined into Gen-pei.

UJI NO CHOJA AND GAKU-IN NO BETTO

The imperially descended uji spoken of above, each consisting of several houses, were grouped according to their names, and each group was under the supervision of a chief, called uji no choja or uji no cho. Usually, as has been already stated, the corresponding position in an ordinary uji was called uji no Kami and belonged to the first-born of the principal house, irrespective of his official rank. But in the case of the imperially descended uji, the chief was selected and nominated by the sovereign with regard to his administrative post. With the appointment was generally combined that of Gaku-in no betto, or commissioner of the academies established for the youths of the uji. The principal of these academies was the Kwangaku-in of the Fujiwara. Founded by Fujiwara Fuyutsugu, minister of the Left, in the year 821, and endowed with a substantial part of his estate in order to afford educational advantages for the poorer members of the great family, this institution rivalled even the Imperial University, to be presently spoken of. It was under the superintendence of a special commissioner (benkwari).

Next in importance was the Shogaku-in of the Minamoto, established by Ariwara Yukihira in the year 881. Ariwara being a grandson of the Emperor Saga, a member of the Saga Genji received the nomination of chief commissioner; but in the year 1140, the minister of the Right, Masasada, a member of the Murakami Genji, was appointed to the office, and thenceforth it remained in the hands of that house. Two other educational institutions were the Junna-in of the O-uji and the Gakukwan-in of the Tachibana-iyt, the former dating from the year 834 and the latter from 820. It is not on record that there existed any special school under Taira auspices.

AGRICULTURE

One of the principal duties of local governors from the time of the Daika reforms was to encourage agriculture. A rescript issued by the Empress Gensho in the year 715 declared that to enrich the people was to make the country prosperous, and went on to condemn the practice of devoting attention to rice culture only and neglecting upland crops, so that, in the event of a failure of the former, the latter did not constitute a substitute. It was therefore ordered that barley and millet should be assiduously grown, and each farmer was required to lay down two tan (2/3 acre) annually of these upland cereals. Repeated proclamations during the eighth century bear witness to official solicitude in this matter, and in 723 there is recorded a distribution of two koku (nearly ten bushels) of seeds, ten feet of cotton cloth, and a hoe (kuwa) to each agriculturist throughout the empire. Such largesse suggests a colossal operation, but, in fact, it meant little more than the remission of about a year's taxes. Necessarily, as the population increased, corresponding extension of the cultivated area became desirable, and already, in the year 722, a work of reclamation on a grand scale was officially undertaken by organizing a body of peasants and sending them to bring under culture a million cho (two and a half million acres) of new land. This interesting measure is recorded without any details whatever.

Private initiative was also liberally encouraged. An Imperial rescript promised that any farmer harvesting three thousand koku (fifteen thousand bushels) of cereals from land reclaimed by himself should receive the sixth class order of merit (kun roku-to), while a crop of over a thousand koku and less than three thousand would carry lifelong exemption from forced labour. The Daika principle that the land was wholly the property of the Crown had thus to yield partially to the urgency of the situation, and during the third decade of the eighth century it was enacted that, if a man reclaimed land by utilizing aqueducts and reservoirs already in existence, the land should belong to him for his lifetime, while if the reservoirs and aqueducts were of his own construction, the right of property should be valid for three generations.* From the operation of this law the provincial governors were excepted; the usufruct of lands reclaimed by them was limited to the term of their tenure of office, though, as related already, legislation in their case varied greatly from time to time.

*This system was called Sansei-isshin no ho. It is, perhaps, advisable to note that the Daika system of dividing the land for sustenance purposes applied only to land already under cultivation.

For a certain period the system of "three generations, or one life" worked smoothly enough; but subsequently it was found that as the limit of time approached, farmers neglected to till the land and suffered it to lie waste. Therefore, in the year 743, the Government enacted that all reclaimed land should be counted the perpetual property of the reclaimer, with one proviso, namely, that three years of neglect to cultivate should involve confiscation. The recognition of private ownership was not unlimited. An area of five hundred cho (1250 acres) was fixed as the superior limit, applicable only to the case of a "First Class" prince, the quantities being thereafter on a sliding scale down to ten cho (twenty-five acres). Any excess resulting from previous accretions was to revert to the State. Evidently the effective operation of such a system predicated accurate surveys and strict supervision. Neither of these conditions existed in Japan at that remote period. The prime purpose of the legislators was achieved, since the people devoted themselves assiduously to land reclamation; but by free recourse to their power of commanding labour, the great families acquired estates largely in excess of the legal limit. A feature of the Nara epoch was the endowment of the Buddhist temples with land by men of all classes, and the sho-en, or temple domain, thus came into existence.