Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/147

 When Yoritomo, the Minamoto chieftain, made Kamakura the administrative capital of the Empire, he adopted the policy of lightening the people's burdens, but he did not succeed in reducing them to fifty per cent of the produce of the land, though it appears to have been the principle of his fiscal system that one-half of the yield of the soil should go to the ruler and one-half to the ruled. Yasutoki (1225–1242), the second of the Hōjō Vicegerents, a man of great governing acumen, not only lowered the taxes to fifty per cent of the produce, but also amended the law of forced labour. Another of the Hōjō chiefs, Tokiyori (1246–1263), pursued this policy still more resolutely. He enacted that the produce of the best land should be estimated at two koku per tan, and that it should be equally divided between the farmer and the Government. A tan of fertile land really yielded two and a half koku. Hence Tokiyori's system gave one and a half koku to the farmer and one to the Government, and the tax, though nominally fifty per cent, was in reality only forty per cent. Tokiyori was the first to introduce this method of lightening the taxes by underestimating the producing power of the land. It was in his time, also, that the monetary value of five koku of unhulled rice was fixed at one thousand copper cash, and a plot of land assessed to yield ten koku and therefore paying five koku, received the name of ik-kwan-mon no kiubun (a "thousand-cash-paying area").