Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/270

 duction and kidnapping of men and women and their sale into serfdom were practices against which laws had to be enacted in the eighth century. The crime was punished by a maximum penalty of three years' penal servitude. But here evidence is found of the large recognition accorded to rights of relationship, for the closer the degree of consanguinity between the person sold and the seller, the milder the penalty. A man selling his own parent or cousin became liable to two and a half years' penal servitude, but the sale of one's own child or grandchild involved only one year of punishment, and if the sale was that of a daughter, the law did not undertake to rehabilitate her.

As to the price at which a serf was valued, there is documentary evidence preserved among the archives of the Nara Court (eighth century). Three males, aged respectively 34, 22, and 15, were sold, the first two for a thousand sheaves of rice each; the third for seven hundred sheaves. Three females, aged 22, 20, and 15, sold at the same time, were appraised, the first two at eight hundred sheaves each, the last at six hundred. A hundred sheaves of rice represent a koku (5.13 bushels) which now sells for about 12 yen. Thus an adult male serf was valued at about 120 yen and a female at about 100 yen.

The cooperation of these various causes must have produced a considerable number of semmin, and, indeed, the best statistics available indicate