PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 447 



all the conditions of land cultivation were so carefully prescribed 

 that the farmer had nothing to do but follow a routine that devi- 

 ated little from generation to generation. Under such a condi- 

 tion 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.* 



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 iifty 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 pi'ovinces 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 sup- 

 pressed, anarchy, famine, social and economical antagonisms, cramped Japan as in bands 

 of iron. 



