To the Emperor Konin belongs the credit of correcting some flagrant abuses in provincial administration. There was an inconvenient outcome of the religious mania which pervaded the upper classes during the reigns of Shomu and Koken. To meet the expense of building temples and casting images, men of substance in the provinces were urged to make contributions of money, cereals, or land, and in return for this liberality they were granted official posts. It resulted that no less than thirty-one supernumerary provincial governors were borne on the roll at one time, and since all these regarded office as a means of recouping the cost of nomination, taxpayers and persons liable to the corvée fared ill. In 774, Koken issued an edict that provincial governors who had held office for five years or upwards should be dismissed at once, those of shorter terms being allowed to complete five years and then removed.
Another evil, inaugurated during the reign of Shomu, when faith in the potency of supernatural influences obsessed men's minds, was severely dealt with by Konin. Office-seekers resorted to the device of contriving conflagrations of official property, rewarding the incendiaries with the plunder, and circulating rumours that these calamities were visitations of heaven to punish the malpractices of the provincial governors in whose jurisdictions they occurred. It is on record that, in several cases, these stories led to the dismissal of governors and their replacement by their traducers. Konin decreed that such crimes should be punished by the death of all concerned. These reforms, supplemented by the removal of many superfluous officials, earned for Konin such popularity that for the first time in Japan's history, the sovereign's birthday became a festival*, thereafter celebrated through all ages.
*Called Tenchosetsu.
THE MILITARY SYSTEM
It has been shown that compulsory military service was introduced in 689, during the reign of the Empress Jito, one-fourth of all the able-bodied men in each province being required to serve a fixed time with the colours. It has also been noted that under the Daiho legislation the number was increased to one-third. This meant that no distinction existed between soldier and peasant. The plan worked ill. No sufficient provision of officers being made, the troops remained without training, and it frequently happened that, instead of military exercises, they were required to labour for the enrichment of a provincial governor.
The system, being thus discredited, fell into abeyance in the year 739, but that it was not abolished is shown by the fact that, in 780, we find the privy council memorializing the Throne in a sense unfavourable to the drafting of peasants into the ranks. The memorial alleged that the men lacked training; that they were physically unfit; that they busied themselves devising pretexts for evasion; that their chief function was to perform fatigue-duty for local governors, and that to send such men into the field of battle would be to throw away their lives fruitlessly. The council recommended that indiscriminate conscription of peasants should be replaced by a system of selection, the choice being limited to men with some previous training; that the number taken should be in proportion to the size of the province, and that those not physically robust should be left to till the land. These recommendations were approved. They constituted the first step towards complete abolishment of compulsory service and towards the glorifying of the profession of arms above that of agriculture. Experience quickly proved, however, that some more efficient management was necessary in the maritime provinces, and in 792, Kwammu being then on the throne, an edict abolished the provincial troops in all regions except those which, by their proximity to the continent of Asia, were exposed to danger, namely, Dazai-fu in Kyushu, and in Mutsu, Dewa, and Sado in the north. Some specially organized force was needed also for extraordinary service and for guarding official storehouses, offices, and places where post-bells (suzu) were kept. To that end the system previously practised during the reign of Shomu (724-749) was reverted to; that is to say, the most robust among the sons and younger brothers of provincial governors and local officials were enrolled in corps of strength varying with the duties to be performed. These were called kondei or kenji. We learn from the edict that the abuse of employing soldiers as labourers was still practised, but of course this did not apply to the kondei.
The tendency of the time was against imposing military service on the lower classes. During the period 810-820, the forces under the Dazai-fu jurisdiction, that is to say, in the six provinces of Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, and Bungo, were reduced from 17,100 to 9000. Dazai-fu and Mutsu being littoral regions, the conscription system still existed there, but in Mutsu there were not only heishi, that is to say, local militiamen of the ordinary type and kenji or kondei, but also chimpei, or guards who were required to serve at a distance from home. Small farmers, upon whom this duty devolved, had no choice but to take their wives and children with them, the family subsisting on the pittance given as rations eked out by money realized from sales of chattels and garments. Thus, on the expiration of their service they returned to their native place in a wholly destitute condition, and sometimes perished of hunger on the way. In consideration of the hardships of such a system, it was abolished, and thus the distinction between the soldier and the peasant received further accentuation.
There is no record as to the exact dimensions of Japan's standing army in the ninth century, but if we observe that troops were raised in the eight littoral provinces only—six in the south and two in the north—and in the island of Sado, and that the total number in the six southern provinces was only nine thousand, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the aggregate did not exceed thirty thousand. There were also the kondei (or kenji), but these, since they served solely as guards or for special purposes, can scarcely be counted a part of the standing army. The inference is that whatever the Yamato race may have been when it set out upon its original career of conquest, or when, in later eras, it sent great armies to the Asiatic continent, the close of the fifth cycle after the coming of Buddhism found the country reduced to a condition of comparative military weakness. As to that, however, clearer judgment may be formed in the context of the campaign—to be now spoken of—conducted by the Yamato against the Yemishi tribes throughout a great part of the eighth century and the early years of the ninth.
REVOLT OF THE YEMISHI
It has been shown that the close of the third decade of the eighth century saw the capital established at Nara amid conditions of great refinement, and saw the Court and the aristocracy absorbed in religious observances, while the provincial governments were, in many cases, corrupt and inefficient. In the year 724, Nara received news of an event which illustrated the danger of such a state of affairs. The Yemishi of the east had risen in arms and killed Koyamaro, warden of Mutsu. At that time the term "Mutsu" represented a much wider area than the modern region of the same name: it comprised the five provinces now distinguished as Iwaki, Iwashiro, Rikuzen, Rikuchu, and Mutsu—in other words, the whole of the northeastern and northern littoral of the main island. Similarly, the provinces now called Ugo and Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan. Within Dewa, Mutsu, and the island of Yezo, the aboriginal Yemishi had been held since Yamato-dake's signal campaign in the second century A.D., and though not so effectually quelled as to preclude all danger of insurrection, their potentialities caused little uneasiness to the Central Government.