all the conditions of land cultivation were so carefully prescribed that the farmer had nothing to do but follow a routine that deviated little from generation to generation. Under such a condition of things, especially under such a system of land tenure and taxation, population obviously could not, and in fact did not, increase either in wealth or numbers; and taken in connection with the circumstance that each of the many daimios or feudal lords maintained great retinues of wholly unproductive retainers, we find an explanation of the fact that Japan continued a poor country with a very slowly increasing population even in times of profound peace. During the century and a quarter from 1721 to 1846, the increase is reported by Japanese authorities to have not been in excess of five per cent.[1]
After the restoration in 1873 of the authority of the emperor, and the abrogation of the daimio system or lordship, a radical change was made in Japan, not only in the general status of the farmer, but in the conditions, under which he cultivated the soil and paid his taxes. All the previous iron rules imposed upon him were abolished; he was given perfect liberty to buy and sell land or adopt new modes of cultivation. The system of payment in kind to each provincial lord was replaced by a national land tax paid in money. The value of every piece of cultivated land was appraised according to a complex and somewhat arbitrary method of valuation, and on this capitalized value three per cent was imposed, in addition to a Government tax of one per cent for local purposes. In 1876 a decree was issued reducing the general tax to two and a half per cent, and the local tax to one half of one per cent. At the same time, with a view to supplement this reduction of local taxation and increase the national revenues, taxes were imposed on spirits and tobacco, on sales (at varying rates), on contracts, receipts, land transfers, petitions (through the agency of stamps), on some professions and mechanical
- ↑ According to a paper read by Prof. Droppers before the Asiatic Society in Tokio, June, 1894, this period was a time of only measurably suppressed anarchy and lawlessness. It was two hundred and fifty years of armed truce. It was one large dance to death. Famines were frequent and dreadful. Having no railroads or steamships, and having, in their eagerness to shut out foreigners and keep in their own people, destroyed all sea-going ships, they had no means of water transportation except by means of wretched junks. Millions upon millions died of hunger. To this day, around the cremation houses of certain inland cities there are acres of heaps of human bones mixed with ashes, the awful witnesses to the might of famine, when hundreds of bodies were burned daily to prevent pestilence. Child murder and exposure were in some provinces so common that the question which neighbors would ask of a father, whether he intended to raise the newborn baby or not, was as proper as it was common. It is estimated by medical men that fifty per cent of the people died of smallpox. Syphilis was almost a national disease. Disease, immorality only partly suppressed, anarchy, famine, social and economical antagonisms, cramped Japan as in bands of iron.
