Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/607

 GEOGEAPHY.] JAPAN 571) warding, and delivery of the postal mails ; as a rule the mayor or vice-mayor of the district is charged with this duty. ages. Rural Life. The agricultural villages are often very poor places, the houses being dilapidated, and the food and clothing of the peasants meagre in the extreme. In many instances the farm-buildings are situated in the midst of the rice-fields or on a hill slope, at some little distance from the road. Even the women and children go out to till the ground from early morn until late in the evening, their labour being sometimes varied by felling trees or cutting brushwood on the hills. In some localities they eke out their means of livelihood by snaring birds, or by fishing in the numerous ponds and rivulets. Those who can afford to do so keep a pack-horse or an ox to be used either as a beast of burden or to draw the plough. The uing farming implements are in many cases very primitive. - The plough is exceedingly small, with but one handle, fields by a single pony or a couple of coolies. To separate the ears of grain from the stalks the latter are 1 pulled by hand through a row of long iron teeth projecting from a small log of timber ; the winnowing fans are two in number, one being worked by each hand at the same time. The spades and hoes used are tolerably good implements, but the sickle consists merely of a straight iron blade, some 4 inches in length, pointed, and sharpened on one side, which projects from a short wooden handle about 15 inches long. When the grain is gathered in, the straw is stacked in small sheaves and left in the fields to dry, after which it is used for thatching or as litter for cattle. In the wilder districts the peasantry are wretchedly poor, and cannot indeed afford to eat even of the rice they cultivate ; their ordinary food is millet, sometimes mixed with a little coarse barley. The potato and the long radish (daikon) are almost the only other articles of food within their means. Agrarian riots are not unfrequently occasioned by bad harvests or scarcity from other causes, and the consequences are sometimes very disastrous, the peasants, when once excited, being prone to burn or pillage the residences of the local officials or headmen of the villages. These riots do not, however, arise as in former days from the exactions of the lords of the soil. There is no doubt that prior to the revolution of 1868-69 the peasantry were in too many cases grievously oppressed by their feudal chiefs, especially on those estates owned by the hatamoto or petty nobility of the shfyun s court at Yedo. These nobles, with some very rare exceptions, resided continuously in the city, leaving their fiefs under the control and management of stewards or other officers ; whenever money was needed to replenish the coffers of the lord, fresh taxes were laid on the peasantry, and, should the first levies prove insufficient, new and merciless exactions were made. Under the present central Government, however, the condition of the Japanese agricultural classes has been greatly ameliorated. A fixed hand-tax is levied, so that the exact amount of dues payable is known beforehand. In the event of inundations, poor harvests, or similar calamities, Govern ment grants are constantly made to the sufferers. -a- ^Education. Throughout the whole country schools have been established, for the support of which the Government often gives substantial assistance. The cost of tuition in these establishments is generally fixed at a rate within the means of the poorest classes. In most of the remote villages the schoolhouse is now the most imposing building. mis- Administration. Court-houses have been erected in &amp;lt;n - each prefecture, where the laws are administered by Government officials appointed by the department of justice at the capital. These courts are placed under a smaller number of superior courts, to which appeals lie, and these Nagasaki, Kumamoto, and Kago- are in turn subordinate to a supreme court of appeal in Tokio. By a Government edict issued on the 13th of Law- September 1876 the titles and jurisdiction of the various courts. courts were fixed as follows : 1. Tokio court ....................... Tokio fu, Chiba ken. 2. Kioto court ..................... Kioto fu, Shiga ken. 3. Ozaka court ...................... Ozaka fu, Sakai ken, and &quot;VVaka- yama ken. 4. Yokohama court ................ Kanagawa ken. 5. Hakodate court .................. Hok kaido. 6. Kobe court ........................ Hiogo ken, Okayaina ken. 7. Niigata court ..................... Niigata ken. 8. Nagasaki court .................. Nagasaki ken, Fukuoka ken. 9. Tochigi court ..................... Tochigi ken, Ibaraki ken. 10. Urawa court ...................... Gumma ken, Saitama ken. 11. Awomori court .................. Aomoii ken, Akita ken. 1 2. Ichinoseki court ............... Iwade ken, Miyagi ken. 13. Yonezawa court ................. Yamagata ken, Fukushima ken. 1 4. Shidzuoka court ............... Shidzuoka ken, Yamanashi ken. 15. Matsumoto court ............... Nagano ken, Gifu ken. 1 6. Kanazawa court ............... Ishikawa ken. 17. Nagoya court .................. Aichi ken, Miye ken. 18. Matsuye court .................. Shimane ken. 19. Matsuyama court ............... Ehime ken. 20. Kochi court ..................... K6chi ken. 21. Iwakuni court .................. Yamaguchi ken, Hiroshima ken. 22. Kumamoto court ............... Kumamoto ken, Cida ken. 23. Kagoshima court .. , ............ Kagoshima ken. Four superior courts, having jurisdiction over the above, were then also established, viz. : ! Tokio, Yokohama, Tochigi, Ura wa, Aichi, Shidzuoka, Niigata, and Matsumoto courts. i Kioto, Ozaka, Kobe, Kanazawa, Matsuyama, Kochi, Matsuye, and Iwakuni courts. Awomori, Ichinoseki, Yonezawa, 3. Miyagi superior court ...... j and H ; kodat(. ,,, . 4. Nagasaki superior court ... Small police stations have been erected in all towns Police. and villages of any importance ; along the high roads the system is carefully organized and well carried out, though in distant localities the police force is often wholly inade quate to the numbers of the population. The Japanese lower orders are, however, essentially a quiet and peaceable people, and thus are easily superintended even by a very small body of police. In the capital and the large garrison towns it is a different matter, and collisions frequently occur with the riotous soldiery. The military stations are established in some 1 of the larger castles throughout the country, the principal garrisons being at Tokio, Sakura in Shimosa, Takasaki in Kodzuke, Nagoya in Owari, Ozaka in Setsu, Hiroshima in Aki, and Kumamoto in Higo. Since the restoration of the mikado Japan has undergone many Internal changes. Innumerable measures of reform in the internal adminis- adminis tration of the country have been introduced. The former terri- tration. torial nobles surrendered their castles and muster-rolls of retainers to the central Government, and are now, in common with the old court nobles of Kioto, classed under the one name of kuazoku, or simply &quot;nobles.&quot; They now reside in Tokio, the capital of the empire. To this class of nobles belongs the former king of the Eiukiu Islands. After the kuazoku come two other grades, called respec tively the sliizoku and the heimin, or, as they may be termed, the gentry and commoners. The former comprises the old hatamolo, or petty nobility of the shogunate, and the samurai, or military families, from whom the retainers of the daimio were recruited. The heimin include the peasantry, artisans, and traders. Thus the ancient &quot;four classes&quot; of the population have been reduced to three. The han system has been abolished, and the system of ken, or prefectures, directly under the control of officers of the central Government, established in its stead. The debts of the han, con sisting chiefly of the redemption of their paper-currency, were also taken over, and this measure certainly involved the present adminis tration in considerable financial difficulties from the very outset, so much so that large issues of Government notes and bonds have become necessary. A grand scheme for the capitalization of incomes was put into operation in August 1876. The daimid, on sur rendering their muster-rolls to the crown, were relieved from the necessity of paying the incomes of their retainers, and, with the old
 * and is easily pulled through the soft mud of the rice-