Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/271

THE HEIAN EPOCH that the ratio was five per cent of the total population. Thus, since the population in the middle of the eighth century was estimated 3,694,331, the ratio of the male and female elements being at 4.6 to 5.4, there must then have been 84,970 male serfs and 99,737 female.

The treatment of serfs in Japan did not display cruelties like those practised in ancient Rome. There were five classes: guards of the Imperial sepulchres, servants employed in Administrative offices, domestic servants. State serfs, and private serfs. Men belonging to the first two classes differed little from ordinary subjects, and were often rehabilitated. They had establishments of their own and could acquire property. Domestic serfs may be described, not incorrectly, as poor relatives who, generation after generation, earned a livelihood by performing menial household duties in families to which they were bound by ties of kith and kin. It seems a misnomer to call such persons "serfs," but they were so classed in old Japan. State serfs were captives made in war, or the domestic serfs — that is to say, the indigent relatives — of men convicted of offences involving degradation and confiscation. The lot of these serfs was ameliorated, rather than aggravated, by transfer to the State. Private serfdom seems to have been the worst condition of all. The private serf was bought and sold like any ordinary chattel, the only proviso being that the transaction must be duly registered. But the lash 241