Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/284

 uals, and the same principle of graduation observed in the case of the income tax is applied to the house tax, so that the burden decreases rapidly as the poorer classes are reached.  —The mayor of a town (shicho) is nominated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs from among three men chosen by the town assembly.  —The number of police-offices in the Empire (including ) is 13,821, and the total number of police officials of all grades, 32,910, or 1 for every 1,421 of the population. The police force has been increased by 4,591 during the past five years, but of that increment the newly organised force for Formosa represents 2,934. There are 365 tribunals of justice, presided over by 1,201 judges with the assistance of 471 public procurators and 5,987 clerks. It has been complained that the number of tribunals and their personnel are not sufficient to discharge the business coming before them. The criticism is probably just, but statistics show that the courts perform their functions rapidly, for in 1897—the latest year included in the published records—they dealt with 313,571 cases altogether, namely, 7,654 appeals and 133,472 first-instance cases, in civil suits; 8,507 questions of conciliation; and 8,723 appeals, and 155,215 first-instance or magisterial cases, in criminal matters.  —Ichikawa's view has been ably summarised by Sir EarnestErnest [sic] Satow. He sets out by declaring that all unwritten traditions must be considered unworthy of belief, not only because they rest on the very fallible testimony of memory and hearsay, but also because the most striking, and therefore the most improbable, stories are precisely those most likely to be thus preserved. He then goes on to show that, on the most favourable hypothesis, the art of writing did not become known in Japan until a thousand years had separated the reign of the first mortal ruler from the compilation of the first manuscript record. He conjectures that "Amaterasu" was a title of comparatively modern invention. He contends that no cosmogony can be credible which makes vegetation antecedent to the birth of the sun. He declares unhesitatingly that the claim of sun-genesis was probably invented by the earliest Mikado for political purposes. He denies that the gods in heaven make any 