Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/189

 Chinese system, must surely revive the ambitions which had proved so irksome to his predecessors. He himself sought to better the condition of the commoners by remitting their taxes, but his successors paid little attention to that important point, and even if the exotic system had not tended to widen the distance between the two sections of the nation, the crushing fiscal burdens imposed on the lower orders must have produced that result. Kwammu, following him at an interval of nearly two centuries, showed equal vigour of purpose, but, for the same reasons, produced an equally ephemeral impression upon the abuses he sought to remedy. He commenced, as stated above, by transferring the capital to Kyōtō, and building it on a scale that educated in the minds of the people an overwhelming conception of the might and majesty of the Court. He then undertook to separate religion and politics by removing all priests from administrative posts, and he essayed to check the nation's extravagant expenditures on Buddhism by interdicting the building of temples without imperial permission. He forbade the seizure of lands for debt. He abolished offices that had been created for the sake of their occupants, and he ruthlessly removed all incompetent officials. To deal with the northern rebels, he ordered the eight provinces watered by the river Tone—namely, the Bando section of Japan—to organise each a body of from 500 to 1000 men, the sons of local