Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/149

 not be eaten without violating the sanctity of life, inclement seasons must often have compelled men to choose between the laws of the creed and the dictates of nature. It was appropriate that the female rulers who patronised Buddhism so passionately, should make special efforts to save their subjects from the temptation of the alternative; and accordingly the Empresses Jito (690–696) and Gensho (715–725) took steps to encourage the cultivation of barley, Indian corn, wheat, sesamum, turnips, peaches, oranges, and chestnuts. Tea, buckwheat and beans were added to this list during the first half of the ninth century, and it is thus seen that Japan possessed at an early date all her staple bread-stuffs, except the sweet potato and the pear. The Empresses mentioned above and the Emperors of their era devised several measures to encourage agriculture,—such as granting free tenure of waste land or bestowing rewards on its cultivators, making loans of money for works of irrigation, and munificently recognising the services of officials in provinces where farming flourished, or punishing them when it fell into neglect,—and adopted precautions against famine by requiring every farmer to store a certain quantity of millet annually. In all ages the Japanese Court showed itself keenly solicitous for the welfare of the people, and its solicitude was fully shared by its protégés, the Buddhist priests. If at one time an Emperor Tenchi (668–671) remitted all taxes for three years, until signs of returning