This episode we continue with the first year of the Taika era and discuss more of the reforms as well as other such things that were going on. We cover what became of Prince Furubito, the previous Crown Prince and rival to the throne, as well as looking at international and internal relations. We see some of the most concerted policy edicts as well, which will radically transform the relationship between the sovereign and the people and land of the archipelago.

In much of what is happening we can see the change in the cultural imaginaries of the people of Yamato, who have been influenced by continental ideas through both trade and through the various books brought over. Reforms were geared towards a more Sinified concept of government, one heavily influenced by Confucian and Buddhist ideas.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this episode 109: Radical Reforms, Resourceful Rats, and Precarious Princes.
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Prince Furubito no Ohoye looked out over the changing autumn leaves of Yoshino. Where the mountains had been painted pink in cherry blossoms just seven months earlier, the mountains were now covered in garments of red, yellow, and orange. Seven months. A lot could happen in seven months. Seven months ago, Prince Furubito had been in line for the throne. His main contender for the position was dead, and he had the support of the most powerful men in the court. Then it had all come crashing down in an instant.
After the turmoil of the court earlier in the year, life in the countryside was no doubt a welcome respite. The former Crown Prince had narrowly avoided sharing in the fate of his Soga relatives, who had been killed in front of him.
Furubito was no stranger to the literally cutthroat politics of the day. Soga no Iruka had killed Yamashiro no Ohoye, son of Shotoku Taishi, ostensibly to place Furubito on the throne, no doubt with the expectation that the Soga descended prince would be easier to control. Furubito himself had not been entirely out of the loop on that whole thing, either, specifically advising Iruka that he should make sure to send subordinates to do the dirty work and keep himself out of harm’s way.
Now Furubito’s seemingly untouchable supporters, Soga no Iruka and his father, were, themselves, dead at the hands of Furubito’s younger brother, Prince Naka no Ohoye. Their mother, Takara, had immediately abdicated, and Prince Furubito was suddenly in the crosshairs, potentially standing between his murderous brother and the throne. And so he took himself out of the picture and retired, becoming a monk at a temple in Yoshino, a mostly wild area south of Asuka and the traditional heartland of Yamato, where sovereigns of the past had sometimes gone to get away.
Furubito had spent the last several months there in the mountains, out of the political center, but that didn’t mean he was completely on his own. Not everyone was against him, and he still had people bringing him news. He may have retired from the world, but he wasn’t without his resources. And there were those still in his camp, who thought he should be on the throne. They just had to keep it under wraps until it was too late for Prince Naka and his cohorts to do anything about it.

So, with that little snapshot of life in Yoshino, let’s get into it. We’re talking about the Taika era, so let’s first start out with a recap of last episode and some things to keep in mind, and then continue with the story of the reforms, looking at what else was happening in that first year, as well.   We’ll talk about the diplomatic missions from the Korean peninsula, the edicts focused on the Yamato elite and the clergy, as well as the strategic use of the change in the capital. We’ll also address just what happened with the “other” crown prince, Furubito no Ohoye.
First off, let’s quickly recap: So last episode we started talking about the Taika era and the Taika reforms. In particular, we looked at how the governance of the archipelago had changed—as best as we can tell, at least, from the evidence available to us—and we looked at some of the very first edicts that went out. According to the Nihon Shoki, things started with the appointment of the Ministers of the Left and Right, the Sadaijin and the Udaijin. As later institutions were created, these ministers would each take a portion of those institutions into their portfolio, effectively dividing the management of the government. Although the Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, was considered senior to the Udaijin, the Minister of the Right, at least in later years, it should be noted that this system would prevent, at least on paper, a single prime minister from taking the reigns of the entire government, as the Soga seem to have largely done. Presumably this meant that the sovereign, as head of state, would have the ultimate authority over the realm.
Still, from the very get-go, we see that there are positions set up outside of this dynamic. For one thing, you have the creation of the seemingly nebulous “Naidaijin”. This is interpreted as the Minister of the Interior, meaning inside the royal house, and it was first granted to Naka no Ohoye’s bro and best bud, Nakatomi no Kamatari—the co-conspirator who had helped make all this possible in the first place. While the Sadaijin and Udaijin nominally had most of the power—and we see them referenced executing that power on a not infrequent basis—the position of Naidaijin appears to be almost extra-numerary, and is rarely mentioned, and yet he seemed to have wielded considerable power and influence. This pattern of creating or using positions to exalt a singular individual, who would effectively run the affairs of state, is something that we’ll see repeated multiple times in the future. Whether this positionwas something like dajo daijin or kampaku, powerful individuals would often find their way, regardless of the bureaucratic norms.
In addition to the Naidaijin, however, the position of the royal princes—especially the Crown Prince—seem to be untouched. These were another class of elites often with wealth and influence, but who are largely outside the system of court ministers.
In fact, the bureaucratic system of government only really covered those positions by the so-called “commoner” families—elite families that nonetheless were not considered to be in a direct line of succession for the throne. These were the members of the various be and uji corporate families that were created to serve the Yamato government. After all, you don’t hear of Royal princes taking on the position of a minister or anything similar, and presumably they managed their own affairs and estates as members of the extended royal family, with the sovereign as the familial head.
And then there were the peasants—the agricultural workers and truly common people who were so far removed from court business that they weren’t even part of an uji clan or official familial unit other than their village, serfs or semi-free people—as free as anyone was in those days, though they were likely tied to the land by tradition and necessity—who owed service to some group of elites.
One of the things we are seeing in these reforms is a move to redirect the responsibilities of those serfs and semi-free people more directly to the state, with edicts directly addressing their status and their responsibilities. That’s something we’ll talk about more as it comes up.
But before that, let’s get caught up on some other things happening in the first few months of the Taika era. Sure, Naka no Oe and Kamatari were working closely with our sovereign, Karu—aka Koutoku Tennou—to get their reforms in place. As we talked about last episode, they were sending out governors, hanging bells outside of the palace, and otherwise trying out all kinds of new stuff. However, as that was going on, they still had to deal with the day to day of the government. Life didn’t just stop while they ramped up their transition to a new, bureaucratic monarchy.
One such routine event for a new reign was the designation of Karu’s wife, Hashibito, as the queen. In the fine Yamato tradition of keeping it all in the family, Hashibito was Karu’s niece, the daughter of Karu’s sister, Takara, aka Kougyoku Tennou, and her late husband, the sovereign Tamura, aka Joumei Tennou. That made Hashibito a sister to Prince Naka no Oe, who was now his uncle’s brother-in-law and, since he was named Crown Prince, his heir. Probably don’t think about it too much.
There was also the matter of foreign envoys. As you may recall, the murder of Soga no Iruka and his father, known to us as the Isshi Incident, kicked off during a court reception for peninsular envoys. Two months later, we are told that envoys from Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla all arrived with tribute. These appear to be separate from those who had witnessed Naka no Oe’s bloody coup d’etat, and given the time it took to travel, they may have already been on their way when everything went down. They arrived in the 7th month of the year, not quite a full month since Karu had taken the throne.
This might have been a regular visit, but we get some interesting information from the Chronicles about it. Kose no Tokuda no Omi addressed the envoys, at least those of Goguryeo and Baekje. Although it is also noted that Silla envoys arrived as well, communications with them are not recorded. There was also a slight problem in that one of the envoys (whose name Aston transcribes as “Chaphyong Yonbok”, suggesting that he was actually the Minister of the Left, Yonbok) apparently traveled all the way to Yamato just to come down with an illness. He stayed at Naniwa and rested while the other envoys made the journey onward, presumably to the palace in Asuka, where the court received the tribute.
As for Goguryeo, Kose notes that Yamato and Goguryeo had not had formal relations for very long. This is unsurprising, given that Goguryeo was on the far north of the peninsula, and would have had to go through either Silla or Baekje controlled territory to get to Yamato, and they weren’t always on the best of terms with either of the other countries on the peninsula. There were some attempts to reach the archipelago by landing on the northern edge of Honshu, along the Japan sea coast, landing near Tsuruga, on the western edge of the land of Koshi, but still, Yamato’s relationship with Goguryeo does not appear to have been as old or as consistent as Yamato’s dealings with their less distant neighbors. Tokuda, the Yamato officer addressing the Goguryeo envoys, wished for long and continued interactions, but that was about it.
Baekje, though, was another story, and a bit of a conflicting one. The speech that Tokuda gives according to the Chronicles is likely heavily edited to sound more regal and to be in line with the Chroniclers’ ideas of Japan’s place in the world, but it is also possible that they were just using flowery, continental style pronouncements. It starts off with the somewhat audacious statement that Karu is a God-incarnate, which tracks with the idea that he is descended from the Heavenly Grandson, who came down from Takama no Hara. This same language was used with Goguryeo, earlier. Then Tokuda repeats the claim that Baekje is a vassal state of Yamato, claiming that they were considered an “internal Miyake”, likely referring to a land that was supposed to be directly controlled by Yamato. One is left to wonder just how Baekje felt about all of this, but then again, things may have been lost in translation from one court to the other.
Finally, Baekje was admonished for not bringing sufficient tribute from Nimna, since it had theoretically been placed under Baekje’s care.
And here’s where I see some conflicting information. After all, we know that Silla had absorbed Nimna well before this period, and Silla had been made to bring two ships during tribute missions or to meet the Yamato delegation with two ships to preserve at least the fiction that Nimna was still an independent country and ally to the archipelago. That was all back in the reign of Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, or earlier . Of course Baekje would not have any tribute from Nimna, and yet the Yamato court seem to have expected something unless, of course, they were just putting on some kind of show for Silla’s sake? It seems like the matter of Nimna, which was no longer a going concern on the peninsula, was still something that Yamato was keeping front and center in their mind.
Whatever the logic, Tokuda says that the sovereign pays special attention to the tribute from Nimna, and as it was deficient, they returned the tribute back to Baekje until they could bring the expected amount.
There is plenty of ink that has been spilt on the subject of the diplomatic tribute systems that were set up across East Asia, largely as part of or in imitation of those systems set up by dynasties like the Han and the Tang. As we understand it, diplomats were expected to come to a foreign sovereign’s courts as petitioners, bringing with them “tribute”—basically trade goods—to grease the wheels of international relations. The receiving country would reciprocate with lavish gifts on the envoys, in turn, often in excess of the “tribute” they had brought—at least, that is how the central Sinic dynasties operated. In this way, diplomatic missions were not only profitable for international relations, but also for acquiring elite goods that could not easily be otherwise obtained, and for that, envoys were willing to go along with the polite fiction that they were truly subordinate to the power they entreated.
It is unclear whether or not this went both ways. I suspect that the Han or Tang dynasties would not have accepted the idea that their own ambassadors would be bringing tribute to any “lesser” nation. However, amongst nations like Yamato, Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo, were there similar concerns? Unfortunately, we don’t really have a clear, contemporary record of these interactions, and can only make assumptions based on what sources do exist. I suspect, however, that Baekje, though willing to indulge Yamato’s fantasies, did not actually consider itself an “inner miyake” of Yamato—though they were a trusted ally. Most of the time.
Which makes me wonder how they took such a snub. Unfortunately, both Baekje and Yamato sources appear to be quiet on that front.
The envoys did not leave empty-handed, however. They sent away the wife and children of a man identified as “Wisa”—likely hostages being held at the Yamato court as part of the other diplomatic system between Baekje and Yamato. We are not told why, however, so we are left only to speculate on what actually happened.
Later that month, and into the next, the reforms were really kicked off, sending out the governors to the eastern provinces and proclaiming some of the early edicts we talked about last month
And while the court was waiting for news to come back from those governors, there was another issue that they were tackling, and that was further incorporating the Buddhist clergy and temples into the state government. Yeah, if you hadn’t already guessed, Yamato at this time didn’t exactly have a principle of the separation of church—or in this case temple—and state. In fact, quite the opposite. For a little over two decades at this point the court had assumed the authority to appoint individuals at the head of the Buddhist clergy, presumably to keep them in line ever since that one incident with the axe—and if you want a reminder, check out Episode 102.
And so a messenger was sent from the court to Kudara-dera to gather all of the clergy there. That was the temple near where Tamura had built his palace, Kudara no Miya, and it reportedly had an absolutely jaw-dropping pagoda, so perhaps little wonder that it was a central location. After recounting the history of Buddhism in the archipelago, the court representative appointed chief priests to ten different temples, as well as the chief priest of Kudara-dera. They then made a promise that the Sovereign—which is to say the State—would pay for the repairs of any of the temples built by the Tomo no Miyatsuko; the courtly families. At the same time, the court also appointed temple commissioners, and expected them and the chief priests to report out the number of priests and nuns, as well as acreage of cultivated temple land. Interestingly, these commissioners were to report directly to the state, rather than through the local governors, indicating that the temples appear to have been somewhat exempt from the local civil authorities, though still under the thumb of the sovereign and the national government. This was likely done through the “Houtou”, or “heads of the Law”, another set of positions for people appointed to oversee Buddhist practice.
In the following month, the court moved on from the clergy and focused on the courtiers: the Omi, Muraji, and the Tomo no Miyatsuko, and not in a fun way: These leading families were called to the carpet for what was seen as a host of offenses. They were accused of compelling their own vassals to labor at their pleasure, and appropriating land for their own private use, denying it to the people. This included mountains, hills, ponds, and even portions of the sea, which they turned into their own private hunting and fishing reserves. They would take prime rice-lands—land that could be brought under cultivation—and use it purely for themselves. They would take portions of the public land, divvy it up, and sell it off as if it were their own. Or they would just rent it out, so that they would collect rent on the property and those who farmed it wouldn’t actually own anything, making them a kind of tenant farmer or even something like a sharecropper. Furthermore, when they collected taxes from those in areas they oversaw, they were accused of taking a portion off the top for themselves before turning over the rest to the government.
And finally, they would take their own people and build palaces for themselves. This practice, though probably nothing new, went against the direction the new state was headed, and if it was allowed to continue, it would potentially reduce the number of laborers available for government projects.
To be clear, not all of the noble families were doing this, but enough that a broad edict was required. This edict not only called out these practices, but specifically banned the private sale of land—likely meaning that it was up to the State to decide how land was apportioned—and it forbade anyone making themselves into a landlord.
Now for anyone who has been following along—or simply looked at human history—the way that the elites had been concentrating power is hardly surprising. History books are filled with examples of those in power using it to aggregate more and more to themselves, especially without some kind of regulation. While the Taika edict treats this like an aberration of the way things should be, it is more likely that this is actually how the system had been designed to work up until this point. There were elites who operated at different levels in an hierarchical structure. Those above provided legitimacy and preferential treatment to those they considered their vassals. Those vassals were left to largely run things as they saw fit at the lower levels, as long as they maintained an expected flow of tribute up the chain. As long as things didn’t get out of hand—no rebellions, famine, etc.—then there was little reason for those at the top to be concerned.
Here, though, we are seeing a different imagining of the state: one where the governance of the state truly does flow from the sovereign down to the people. Those who had been studying the Buddhist and Confucian canons from the continent had been introduced to new ideas of what a state ought to be, and now that they were in power, they were determined to implement those ideas.
One has to imagine that this ruffled more than a few feathers, and I have to wonder if it didn’t contribute, at least in some way, to what else was happening around the same time. Remember, all of this—the tribute missions, the governors, the gathering of the clergy, and dressing down the courtiers—all happened in the first three months of the new reign—the Taika era. But in the ninth month, the court’s attention was also turned to another matter, when a man named Kibi no Kasa no Omi no Shidaru came to Naka no Ohoye with a confession: He claimed he had been party to a meeting in Yoshino with none other than Prince Furubito no Ohoye, along with members of the Soga, the Yamato no Aya, and the Yechi no Hata. They were all disillusioned with this new reign and how they got here, and were plotting to put a stop to it by overthrowing Karu and putting Prince Furubito on the throne.
So, yeah, this is where we circle back to where we started the episode – imagining Prince Furubito, hanging out in the mountains of Yoshino, enjoying his near escape and contemplating his retirement. Things weren’t quite that peaceful.
I’d note that another source claims that the guy who spilled the beans, Kibi no Kasa no Omi, instead went to the Daijin, the Great Ministers, Abe no Oho-omi and Soga no Oho-omi, the ministers of the Right and Left. Regardless of who he spoke to, he ratted out all of his co-conspirators.
The details are sparse on just how everything unfolded from there, but we know that Naka no Ohoye appointed two generals to go and arrest—by which I’m pretty sure he meant assassinate—Prince Furubito no Ohoye. Whether or not the Prince had actually kicked off discussions or had even participated in any significant way, Naka no Ohoye’s brother was too dangerous as a symbol around which anyone discontented with the new order could try and rally.
And it’s not at all surprising to imagine that there are those who were not exactly happy with where things were going.   The throne was exerting greater control than it had in some time—perhaps more than it ever had, at this scale. The foreign ideas that had come in the way of books and learning may have, at first, been just another way for the elite to demonstrate their own superiority, but now these ideas were starting to affect the way they, themselves, had to operate. You could either accept it as the way forward or you could resist.
Those who would resist, though, needed someone to rally around. Since the Sovereign and the Crown Prince were both pushing for change, anyone opposed would need to find a new sovereign to uphold their own ideas. To that end, Furubito no Ohoye must have been an enticing figure. He really was from the old school. Sure, that was a Soga dominated school, drenched in the blood of other members of the royal family, but it was still something that those who wanted to conserve their old way of life could use to legitimize their position.
And that made Furubito no Ohoye dangerous, regardless of whether or not he encouraged such individuals or not.
And so Uda no Yenomuro no Furu and Koma no Miyachi departed with a sizeable force to take out the Prince. Which, spoiler alert: they did.
There are some conflicting accounts on this. Some records claim that the attack force didn’t set out until more than two months later, on the 30th day of the 11th month. Others say that the generals were actually Kosobe no Omi no Abe and Sahekibe no Komaro, at the head of only thirty men. It is possible that both accounts are correct in some way, or that various family records retroactively claimed credit for the attack. It may also be that the time from the conspiracy’s discovery to the eventual resolution—the killing of Furubito and his household—took a little over two months to complete; a not unreasonable situation.
This whole event is often talked about as Furubito no Ohoye’s revolt, and if we take the Chronicles at face value, that is largely accurate. However, we don’t have many actual details, and we do know about Naka no Ohoye—we know that he hadn’t been afraid to kill Soga no Iruka in broad daylight, in the middle of the court. Would it have really been too much for him to manufacture a conspiracy to provide him an excuse to take out his older brother and thus prepare his own eventual rise to the throne? On things like this, the Chronicles are largely silent, and we can only speculate as to what was actually going on. Still, I have to wonder.
Following the death of Furubito no Ohoye, and the suppression of the rebellion in his name, the sovereign, Karu, announced that he had settled on a location for his new palace. While most of the edicts at this time broke new ground, this one did not, following a tradition that, if we believe the Chronicles, had been around for centuries. Each new sovereign would designate a location for their new palace, moving out of the palace of their predecessor. Usually this would beannounced at the very start of a reign, but as we’ve seen, this reign had gotten off to a busy start, and so we don’t see mention of the new palace until the twelfth month.
The tradition of moving out of an old palace and into a new one is thought to have typically been due to the ritual pollution, or tsumi, attached to the palace of a sovereign who has died -- often in the palace itself, if they were lucky enough to pass away in their sleep. Of course, in this case the throne didn’t pass on the occasion of the sovereign’s death, but there had certainly been plenty of blood spilled in the palace, recently, so I imagine that moving the palace was to be expected.
Less expected was exactly where he moved the palace to, since Karu decided not to stay put in the Asuka region, and instead chose to move the palace to the port of Naniwa, where the continental envoys came.
There are numerous examples throughout Japanese history where a change was made to move the capital, or at least the seat of government, to somewhere new. In many cases, this was to get away from various political forces that had become entrenched in the capital region. Courtiers and their retinue would settle near the palace, and soon an entire area was controlled, physically and politically, by a few powerful families or institutions. The Asuka region, for example, had started out as the ancestral stronghold of the Soga clan, and for the past century had operated as the seat of Soga controlled sovereigns. Tamura, or Jomei Tennou, had seemingly tried to move a little ways outside, near the site of Kudaradera, but his wife and successor, no doubt with the assistance and counsel of Soga no Emishi, had moved back into the Asuka valle, proper.
Moving to Naniwa would have been quite the undertaking, as it didn’t just mean moving the palace, but it meant moving the whole infrastructure of the government. Granted, this wasn’t exactly on par with the size and complexity of the Imperial dynasties in what we now know as China, but it did mean that the powerful families would need to make sure that they had a residence of some sort near the new capital if they wanted to be close to the reins of power. That meant that they would need to also expend some of their own resources, as well.
Also, it would be a good time to provide a sense of renewal for the era. The Chroniclers added a line, taken from various Chinese histories, that shortly after the announcement of the new capital’s location, rats were seen moving across the countryside in the direction of Naniwa. At its most basic level, this likely recognized that when the people abandon a capital for a new city, that new city quickly has its own population. No doubt it was felt that the rats had simply followed the people there. The migration of rats would figure into several other movements during this reign, as well. It was apparently a popular trope.
The movement started in the twelfth month of the first year of Taika, or 645, and would be completed in the third month of the following year, 646. That was around the same time that word was coming back from the lands in the east about just how things were going with the newly appointed governors. Giventhe killing of Furubito no Ohoye in the 11th month of 645, as well as everything else that was now happening, the capital would be the catalyst for a fresh new slate in more ways than one. The building of the new palace, and the need to entreat the kami, that would be used as an excuse to issue a general amnesty -- the “Get out of jail free” card for the governors and others who hadn’t quite gotten on board, which we talked about last episode. They were shown the stick, but offered a carrot. While not explicitly stated, this may have also been a time to bury the hatchet for the pro-Furubito faction as well, giving them a chance to move on.
And there was a lot of movement to be had. We are told that there was a proclamation in the first month of 646—a proper edict of reforms. These are laid out in four articles, and are perhaps the closest we have to a true “code” of the reforms from this era. And warning: this is where the reforms get really radical.
The first article was on land ownership and allocation. Specifically, it abolished the various royal Miyake and the previously established “representatives of children”—which I’m guessing refers to the various families that were tasked with supporting some of the various royal princes and other royal descendants. It also abolished various farmsteads of serfs and abolished the bonds of those serfs who owed their service to various royal families; the ministers, the Omi and the Muraji; and general courtiers, the Tomo no Miyatsuko; as well as the various lords of the lands, the Kuni no Miyatsuko, and even down the villages, to the level of the Mura no Obito.
In place of these mechanisms of bringing in rice and other goods, various fiefs were created out of the previously held land and redistributed to various princes and officials on a descending scale, with those at the top of the courtly rank system getting the most productive, and less for those further down. To sweeten this deal, gifts of cloth were also given at the time of the edict, likely as a way to offset any harsh feelings.
In the end, this article completely rewrote how land was owned in the archipelago, at least in principle. The land belonged to the sovereign, who apportioned it out as required. The fiefs would then supply incomes to government officials, effectively providing them a salary. Those higher in the court system, which is to say those with a higher court rank, would have a larger stipend. Some version of this system, which wasn’t always as strictly enforced, would continue right up until it was abolished in the early Meiji era.
The second article of the reforms largely targeted the capital and the “Home Provinces”, recognized, today, as the area from modern Iga city in the east; to Mt. Seyama, in Wakayama, to the south. It extended westward past modern Kobe to the Akashi area, and north to Afusakayama, on the southwestern shores of Lake Biwa, due east of modern Kyoto city. These correspond largely to the areas that were traditionally under Yamato’s direct rule, and where many of the noble families had their base of operations. Actual governors were appointed to the home provinces, like Kii, Kawachi, Harima, Yamashiro, etc., with various roads, barriers, outposts, and more created to secure the home territories. Post horses were included, and this is the first mention of the creation of bell tokens, a kind of bronze amulet with various round “bells” incorporated into the design. These bell tokens would become a kind of badge of office for anyone traveling, as they would be used at government posts along the road to determine what kinds of and how many horses a given official was entitled to during their official travel.
The area within the capital itself was divided into “wards”, or “Bo”. Each ward would have an “wosa” appointed from the population. Aston translates this as “alderman”, though it feels like “magistrate” is more appropriate. For every four wards, an unagachi, or chief magistrate, was appointed. These wosa and unagachi were charged to watch over the people and investigate criminal matters. They were supposed to be people of “good character and solid capacity”, and if nobody in the ward could serve, then someone could be chosen from an adjoining ward, instead.
Throughout the rest of the home provinces, the land was divided up into “townships” (RI or Sato), rather than wards, and townships would be gathered into “districts” (GUN or Koori). Large districts were those with over forty townships. Middle districts were those with anywhere from four to thirty townships. And districts of three or fewer townships were considered Lesser Districts. The Japanese for these would be Tai-gun, Chuu-gun, and Shou-gun, but I should note that it is unclear whether that was the actual term used or just the way to write it in the Sinitic style of the Chronicles. The governors of these areas were the Tairei and Sharei, glossed in Japanese as the Koori no Miyatsuko and the Suke no Miyatsuko, though Aston suggests those were just translations, and the Yamato court was probably using the On’yomi for the names as this was an attempt to copy continental governance.
For these positions, you were expected to be not just good, but of “unblemished” character. They were assisted by clerks and others who were skilled in writing and arithmetic. I suspect a lot of this was also applied to the governors discussed in the previous episode, though we did not see such a clear list of qualifications for them and their staff at the time.
So that set up the governance of the capital and the capital region, in a model that would be followed elsewhere.
The third of the four articles provided for drawing up accounts of the land and people—much as the governors were doing in the east. They also create The Books, as in the accounting books for the government. These were to record the state of, well, the State. How many people, what land was out there, in what condition, and to whom did it belong. It would be the official register of receipts telling everyone what land belonged to whom.
It also defined the townships, or Ri, as being made up of 50 households, with one magistrate per township, as above. However, given that these townships were in the countryside, the magistrate was also responsible for the direction of sowing the crops and the cultivation of mulberry trees, used primarily for silk production. It also fell to the magistrate to enforce the payment of taxes, both in rice and forced labor.
And here we see just how much those taxes were. Rice fields were measured by “tan”, sometimes translated as “kida”, which was an area of thirty paces by twelve paces. That comes out to somewhere between 9,000 to 11,000 square feet, depending on the size of the pace—a modern “tan” is figured at 10,800 square feet, or a little over one thousand square meters or a bit under one quarter of an acre. From there, ten tan would make a CHO, the largest land unit mentioned here. All of this was only true of flat land, however. For steep and wooded land, the various officials in charge would need to make special arrangements. Afterall, a thousand square meters of cliff face wasn’t exactly producing a ton of rice—or mulberry trees, for that matter.
The tax for each tan of cultivated land was 22 bundles of rice on the stalk. A single bundle was the amount that a person could reasonably grasp in one hand. Ten bundles made up a sheaf, so actually it was 2 sheafs and 2 bundles. The edicts then laid out the math to verify that for a CHO it was 22 sheafs, or ten times that of a TAN.
And all of this can be pretty boring and, well, academic, but it starts to get us a glimpse into life outside of the elite courtiers. We can see that they assumed a community was about 50 households in rural areas, and you likely would have gotten to know your neighbors, as they were the ones you were planting and harvesting with. While I’m not sure that a TAN was equivalent to a single field, we can see that four TAN would have been roughly an acre of land—an acre itself being an agricultural unit that was about as much land as a single individual could work in a day.
What isn’t clear from all of this is what was the expected gross yield of the field—in other words, how much of the crop would the farmers themselves be able to keep? In later centuries, farmers often couldn’t afford to keep their own crop of rice, and had to settle for eating millet and other, cheaper grains, with almost all of the rice they grew going to pay their taxes
Besides taxes on the fields, there were also other taxes to be considered, but these were dealt with in the fourth and final article of the reforms of 646. Up front, this article abolished any earlier taxes that may have been imposed, clearing the way for a new tax structure. From there, it first laid out a series of alternatives to rice for paying your taxes. One was the ability to pay in cloth, so for instance, if you had a single TAN of land, you could pay the 2 sheafs and 2 bundles of rice OR you could pay 10 feet of fine silk, 2.5 feet in width—the width of most home looms at the time. Alternatively there were conversions into coarse silk (double it to 20 feet) or another bast fiber cloth (double again, to 40 feet). Silk thread or silk floss are not mentioned as a substitute for the rice tax on land.
But: this Article also laid out additional taxes to those on the fields. Each household would have to also produce at least 12 shaku—roughly 12 feet—of bast fiber cloth each year. There were also other taxes such as salt, etc., all depending on what was locally produced. And on top of that, for every 2 townships of 100 people, they had to produce a single horse for the government. A particularly fine horse could be used to cover the taxes for up to 4 townships. And if they could not produce a horse, they would need to provide up to 12 feet of cloth per household to offset the cost of the government buying one. That is 12 feet of cloth in addition to what they already had to pay.
In addition to that, every person was expected to supply a sword, armor, bow and arrows, a flag, and a drum. This may have only been for those able-bodied men called up for service, though—it isn’t exactly clear.
And then, when there were public works to be done, each township had the responsibility to offer up a single, able-bodied individual, and to provide 22 feet of cloth and 5 masu of rice for their service, to keep them clothed and fed. This was actually an improvement on previous corvee labor requirements, which required one person per thirty households, who were all supposed to support them.
Finally, there is a note about Uneme—the handmaidens at the court. Uneme were drawn from the sisters or daughters of district officials of the rank of shorei and upwards. Each Uneme was expected to be furnished with one male and two female servants to attend to their needs. They would be provided cloth and rice similar to laborers, except that the cost was to be spread out across one hundred households, not just fifty.
Again, we get a glimpse of what life under the new regime was like—or at least what it was supposed to be like. We saw mention of taxes and other such things early on in the Chronicles, but this is the first time we really get to see what kinds of taxes would be levied on the common households. A single agricultural household would likely be responsible for some portion of the town’s field-tax, as well as a tax of cloth on their own home, and possibly supporting a laborer or even the purchase of a government horse. Finally, they could also be responsible for providing for one of the handmaidens of the court.
It was clear that the state was extending its reach in new ways. In some cases this would have clearly been an improvement: there was a reduction in the amount of labor that people had to provide, and things were being standardized. There were bureaucratic lines being built from the townships and wards up through to the sovereign, providing a clear connection between sovereign and vassal. On the other hand, this trod on the ancestral traditions of certain groups. We saw the attempted revolt around Prince Furubito no Ohoye, but after his death, the opposition didn’t really have a central figure to rally around. And so the reforms would continue.
Although the reforms at the start of 646 may have been some of the most formal, there is still a lot of change to come and we’ll deal with that in the next few episodes.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support.
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And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Van Goethem, E. E. M. A. (2009). Capital and Countryside in Japan, 300-1180: Japanese Historians Interpreted in English (Joan R. Piggott, ed.). Journal of Asian Studies, 68(3), 988–90.
Kracke, E. A. (1976). Early Visions of Justice for the Humble in East and West. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 96(4), 492–498. https://doi.org/10.2307/600081
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Knox, George William (1903). The Early Institutional Life of Japan, a Study in the Reform of 645 A. D. By K. ASAKAWA, Ph.D. The American Historical Review, Volume 11, Issue 1, October 1905, Pages 128–129

Rough Transcript

References