Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/21



INANCIAL affairs naturally occupied a prominent place in Japan's modern career. At one time, indeed, her condition caused much uneasiness and elicited from on-lookers many predictions of disaster. But by skilful management her statesmen rescued her from embarrassment and falsified all sinister forecasts. The story of that achievement may well occupy attention for a moment.

It has been shown that in Tokugawa days the land throughout the Empire was regarded as State property, and parcelled out into numerous fiefs, the feudatories holding it in trust and being empowered to derive certain revenue from it. The standard of taxation varied more or less in different districts, but, at the time of the Restoration in 1867, the most generally recognised prin-