Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/63

 The broad lines of the new division were four: military (shi), agricultural (no), industrial (ko), and commercial (sho); the merchant being placed at the bottom of the scale, the artisan above him, and the farmer, who paid the greater part of the taxes, ranking next after the soldier.

It is plain, however, that this four-fold classification of shi-nō-kō-shō excludes many means of gaining a livelihood which are practised in every organised community. Religious prejudices were chiefly responsible for the exclusion. From what had been already written about the extremely strict laws of pollution and purification, the reader will readily infer that not all professions, be they ever so useful and honest, could be regarded by the Japanese as honourable. Thus every occupation that brought a man into contact with unclean things, as the corpses of human beings, the carcasses of animals, and offal of all descriptions, was degraded. In obedience, again, to another code of ethics, occupations that catered for the sensuous side of human nature, and every occupation without any fixed scale of remuneration, suffered some taint of ignominy. A large section of the population consequently fell under a social ban, which was not removed until the great reformation of the Meiji era in recent times. Not infrequently the members of this section are broadly spoken of as Eta (people of many impurities). But the Eta were only a