Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/162

 That was the case down to the latest times. Taxes were originally levied in the form of a percentage of the gross produce of a farm. Then, when, copper having been discovered here and there throughout the Empire, supplies of it became desirable for minting purposes, the Government enacted that taxes might be paid in that metal; a change obviously necessitating official assessment of the koku in terms of cash. Fiscal convenience dictated the simplest possible assessment, so the koku was declared to represent one kwan (1,000 cash), and its thousandth subdivision, the go, became the equivalent of one cash. Of course nature, capricious in a subtropical country like Japan, did not lend constant sanction to such an arbitrarily fixed value. Sometimes a koku of rice sold in the open market for nearly twice the official assessment, and once, in time of famine (867 ), it rose to eight times that figure. But even as late as the era of the Vice-regents of Kamakura (1230) the Government, maintaining its theoretical independence of storms and inundations, clung to the old assessment of one go for one mon, and up to comparatively modern times the official figure corresponded approximately with the true market measure. A labourer in Japan is credited with capacity to consume five go (one and one-half pints) of rice daily; a man of refined habits is allowed three go. It is thus seen that a thousand cash purchased from two hundred to three hun-