Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/121

 assembly, but the inferior limit is thirty. For a town assembly, however, the superior limit is sixty and the inferior thirty; for a county assembly the corresponding figures are forty and fifteen, and for a district assembly, thirty and eight. These bodies are all elective. The property qualification for the franchise in the case of prefectural and county assemblies is an annual payment of direct national taxes to the amount of three yen; and in the case of town and district assemblies, two yen; while to be eligible for election to a prefectural assembly a yearly payment of ten yen of direct national taxes is necessary; to a county assembly, five yen, and to a town or district assembly, two yen. In towns and districts franchise-holders are further divided into classes with regard to their payment of local taxes. Thus, for town electors there are three classes differentiated by the following process: On the list of rate-payers, the highest are checked off until their aggregate payments are equal to one-third of the total taxes. These persons form the first class. Next below them the persons whose aggregate payments represent the same fraction (one-third) of the total amount are checked off to form the second class, and all the remainder form the third class. Each class elects one-third of the members of assembly. In the districts there are only two classes, namely, those whose payments, in order from the highest, aggregate one-half of the total, the remaining names on the list