FINANCIAL CONDITIONS
fourth per cent of the market value of the land. In short, the farmers entered into absolute possession of the fields they had hitherto cultivated as mere tenants, and in return for being transformed into owners they were required to pay a rent assessed on a basis of eighty years' purchase. An agriculturist in England or America would certainly think himself singularly fortunate if a farm were declared his property without any condition except the yearly payment of a rent not even amounting to one-fourth of that usually charged for the mere privilege of tenancy. It would scarcely occur to him to claim that such a rent should be considered as including his taxes. Yet that is the case with the Japanese farmer. He pays no tax whatever unless his very petty rent can be held to be partly a tax. It is true that he is liable for income tax in common with all his countrymen; but the income tax in Japan is so graduated that the lower classes are scarcely sensible of its incidence, and at any rate the total sum collected under that heading from a nation of 44,000,000 is only 550,000 pounds, or an average of three pennies per head.[1] But an inquiry limited to the case of the agricultural population does not satisfactorily account for the fact that whereas the ordinary revenue of the State was 78,000,000 yen ten years ago (1891), it is now 201,000,000, having increased to the startling extent of two hundred and eighty-six per cent in
- ↑ See Appendix, note 7.
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