Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/146

 to forty momme. There was also a house-tax (kobetsu) which took the form of a twelve-foot piece of cotton cloth per house, or six pieces of ten feet per chō of land; and, finally, the farmer had to pay "subordinate produce" (fuku-sanbutsu) to the value of thirty momme per chō. All these imposts of "prepared articles" aggregated about one hundred and eighty momme, or three ryō per chō, and since the price of hulled rice was two and a half koku per ryō and the grain tax was six and a half koku per chō, it would seem that the total imposts levied on each chō of land were fourteen koku. The average produce of rice per chō was reckoned in those days at twenty koku, and it thus appears that seventy per cent of the produce was taken by the tax-collector. The people were further required to provide weapons of war, and had to perform forced labour. The saying current in that era—from the close of the tenth century to the middle of the twelfth—was that the Government took seven-tenths of the produce of the land and left to the people only three-tenths.

It has to be remembered in this context that, in addition to the taxes enumerated above, every male between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-six was liable for thirty days' forced labour annually, and every minor for fifteen days; which corvée could be commuted by paying three pieces of cotton cloth, equivalent in value to about a koku of rice.