Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/143

 The system of taxation adopted in Japan in early times and the changes it underwent from age to age are interesting, not merely from a historical point of view, but also and chiefly as furnishing an index of the people's capacity to bear fiscal burdens. It is a somewhat obscure subject, though not so difficult to understand as the confusing attempts hitherto made to elucidate it would imply.

Land measure seems to have been based at the outset on a very practical consideration. The area required to grow sufficient rice for an adult male's daily consumption—in other words, a man's ration—was taken as the unit. A square whose side measured two paces, or six feet, being considered the area adequate for that purpose, received the name of ho, afterwards changed to tsubo. This unit of superficial measure remains unchanged until the present day. There being three hundred and sixty days in the year according to the old calendar—twelve months of thirty days each—a space measuring three hundred and sixty tsubo, and producing a year's rations, naturally suggested itself as another fundamental area, the term tan being applied to it. For the rest, the decimal system was adopted: one-tenth of a tan being called se, and ten tan a chō.

Thus far as to superficial measurement. The next question is the grain grown on a given