Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/150

 customs renders it difficult to arrive at any precise estimate of the sums levied from the people in feudal Japan.

Hideyoshi, the Taikō, showed himself such a consummate statesman that one naturally looks for a reduction of taxation among his administrative measures. The opposite is the truth. He fixed the ratio of the landlord's share to that of the farmer at two to one, or, as the men of his time expressed it, the Government took seven parts and left only three to the people. He also altered the measure of the tan by changing the number of tsubo from three hundred and sixty to three hundred,—a step which has frequently been condemned as an arbitrary device for increasing the burden of taxation, though in reality it had no such effect. Had the nominal yield of the tan for purposes of taxation been assessed at the same figure for the tan of three hundred tsubo as for the tan of three hundred and sixty tsubo, there would have been good ground for complaint, but since the taxable yield was diminished in the same ratio as the area, the farmer suffered no hardship on that account. His genuine grievance consisted in having to pay into the treasury nearly seventy per cent of his farm's produce. The Taikō further had recourse to forced labour unsparingly. The great works that he caused to be constructed—the castles at Osaka and Fushimi—required the employment of thousands of workmen, and his example induced many of the provincial magnates