This episode covers just the first three months of year 2 of the Taika reforms, but there is a lot in the various edicts. The labor of the elites was being moved under the purview of the State, which would have wide ranging consequences. And there were restrictions placed on the size of mounded tombs—though those appear to have been falling out of vogue around this time, replaced with familial temples.

Tomb measurements were made in shaku (尺) and hiro (尋). A shaku is considered equivalent to about 1 foot, with a conversion, today, of about 0.99 feet to a shaku. A hiro was about 5 shaku. Later, a hiro would be made roughly equivalent to a European fathom, and so today it is often 6 shaku, instead. However, given that it was actually based on the distance between a grown man’s outspread arms, 5 shaku is a more reasonable distance for what we are discussing.

  
    Rank
    Interior
    Exterior
    Labor
    Time
    Other allowances
  

    Royal Prince
    9尺ｘ5尺ｘ5尺
    9尋ｘ9尋ｘ5尋
    1000人
    7 days
    White cloth hangings and transport by funeral cart
  

    Superior Ministers
    9尺ｘ5尺ｘ5尺
    7尋ｘ7尋ｘ3尋
    500人
    5 days
    White cloth hangings and transport on men's shoulders
  

    Lower Ministers
    9尺ｘ5尺ｘ5尺
    5尋ｘ5尋ｘ2.5尋
    250人
    3 days
    White cloth hangings and transport by funeral cart
  

    Ranks Dainin to Shonin
    9尺ｘ4尺ｘ4尺
    No mound (level ground)
    100人
    1 day
     
  

    Ranks Dairei to Shochi
    9尺ｘ4尺ｘ4尺
    No mound (level ground)
    50人
    1 day
  

One of the key concepts this episode is that of “harai”, or “purification”. This is a term often used in Shinto, today, often in relation to things like “tsumi”: ritual pollution. It seems to have been a bit broader in the past, however, and was something that people actively attempted to avoid having to do, likely because of the social and/or fiscal costs associated with it. Unfortunately, what it was isn’t exactly laid out, but we can make some guesses based on later centuries.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 110: Manual Labor, Mounded Tombs, and Marital Missteps.
Maro sat by the small campfire he had made along the river’s edge. The water nearby was going to be the catalyst for the gruel that he was making with some of the last bit of food that he had. As he stirred the pot, he looked over at his friend, lying out, his head propped up against the rock.
Maro and Sumi had been working on one of the large tombs in Asuka at the commandof their lord, who had built it for his deceased father. Now they were released and headed back to their village, still two days out. Unlike their superiors, they didn’t get horses to ride across the landscape, so it would be a few days before they returned home. Unfortunately, Sumi had grown ill, and he was now almost delirious with fever. Maro couldn’t bear to leave his friend, but he also cursed his luck.
What if Sumi were to die? It was one thing to die at home, or even when they were working on the tomb. But now they were travelers—strangers on the road. If something happened to Sumi, Maro knew he couldn’t just leave him, but neither could he go trudging through the countryside with a dead body. Even association with death would bring problems for him, and if local villagers were to find out, they could force him to pay for the necessary ritual purification—or worse. Heck, even something as simple as cooking rice on the side of the road could bring problems for a poor traveler—hence why Maro had found some place off the beaten path and away from prying eyes.
Under his breath he prayed to whatever powers were listening to help Sumi recover. If they could only make it back to their village, then everything would be alright.
Once again, we are looking at the second year of Taika, 646. As we heard in the past couple of episodes, the first year of Taika saw a plethora of edicts that would bring radical change to the way that the sovereign interacted with the land and the people. These provided the start of much more direct rule,   and yet also set the stage for a new bureaucratic state, with various new officials up and down the hierarchy.
This episode we are continuing to look at what happened in the first several months of 646, largely because there was so much going on that it’s worth focusing in on this short time period.   For one thing, we really should talk a little bit more about how this entire Taika era is reflecting the culmination of what appears to have been a major change to Yamato’s cultural identity over the preceding century or so—a change in perspective that may not have even been entirely apparent to them, but which allowed Naka no Oe and the sovereign, Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou, to get away with these pronouncements that restructured the basic foundations of the Yamato state. These changes include the death knell of the kofun period, with new restrictions on how mounded tombs were to be created, including how large they were allowed to be. We’ll also look at a litany of items being called out in the third month of the year—many of which directly affected people at the lowest ends of the economic spectrum and which give us a view of some of the practices that had presumably been going on prior to the edict.
As we’ve already discussed, the early part of the year 646 saw quite a few quote-unquote “normal” things happening. The sovereign moved into a new detached palace, perhaps while the Toyosaki Palace was being built. This was the Koshiro Palace of Sayabe, in Naniwa. Emissaries were sent out to restore—or possibly build—the arsenals; you may recall that the governors were supposed to gather up all of the weapons and armor in a single place so that it could be available, just in case. Envoys from the Emishi came to do homage, and there was another round of envoys from Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Apparently, this time, there were no complaints about the tribute. That was all in the first two months. By the third, the governors had been called to account for their misdeeds, but also pardoned – we talked about this two episodes ago, when we explored the new system of governors, but this is when their pardons happen – and the sovereign moved out of the Koshiro Palace, presumably to take up residence in the shiny new Toyosaki palace that was just getting blessed and which was the nominal reason for the general amnesty across the land.
And with all of that over… well, it was time to get back to figuring out what part of the traditional order they would overthrow next. And apparently, Karu, our sovereign, had an idea. He sent a question to the Crown Prince, Naka no Oe, to see what he thought about it, and we are given the Prince’s response in a letter back to the crown on the 20th day of the 3rd month of 646.

The question Karu had askedwas roughly: what should be done about a group of families called the Iribe, including the Koshiro no Iribe of the Omi, Muraji, the Tomo no Miyatsuko, and the Kuni no Miyatsuko; and the Mina no Iribe of the Royal Princes. Karu had also evidently asked what should be done about the Miyake.
Now the question reading as “what should be done about these people” sounds a bit ominous, so before we get to Naka no Oe’s suggestions, let’s explore just who were the “Iribe” mentioned here. As far as I can find, there doesn’t appear to be another use of that word in the Chronicles, but the other terms around it provide clues and we have a general consensus about what this is all about. “Koshiro”—the Child’s Generation—and the “Mina”—the exalted name—suggest that the Iribe were those families set up in the name of a given prince or person. As we’ve talked about on the podcast in the past, from the start of the various “Be” families, there was a longstanding tradition of creating specific families to support given individuals: for former queens, princes, and more. These families often took the name of the palace where these individuals resided. The output of these families and worker groups would then go to support that individual and their relatives.
The language used in Naka no Oe’s letter, here, suggests that various other elites had set up similar groups for themselves or their own relatives This is supported by the fact that the Miyake are also mentioned. The Miyake were the royal granaries, and while they had a political significance in extending the presence of the Yamato throne, they were also supplying income, in the form of rice, to the throne and various members of the royal family.
So, Karu’s question basically boiled down to: what do we do about all of these groups that exist purely to support elite families? Naka no Oe’s response reflects the new order that he was pushing for in this period. He notes that there is only one sovereign, and only the sovereign was owed the labor of the populace—suggesting that the labor of the Iribe and those otherwise conscripted into labor should be done according to the new labor laws they had just enacted. This also suggested that even the Miyake should be abolished.
This was another Big Change in the Taika era, and once again, this would have large ramifications, as it suggested, once again, that the traditions of people providing labor to these elite families would go away—although not entirely. As we will see, elites would still get an income, but it would no longer be based on your hereditary rank and position and provided by groups bound to your service alone, but instead based on your appointed rank and position in the new government. Those serving in government would continue to receive a stipend based on the labor of agricultural workers on land allotted to such purpose by the state, and in fact we’ve already seen where stipends were increased for some officers.
This goes along with the idea, at least, of a more merit-based society. Those who worked hard and proved themselves would find their way to the highest positions and thus the greatest income for themselves and their families. In reality, these promotions were highly political affairs, and most likely to go to those who came from the families already in power. How that was envisioned, though, changed in this period, and it really emphasizes the shift that must have occurred within the cultural imaginary of the time.
I’ve mentioned before the concept of the cultural imaginary, and it is something that I think we really need to talk about during this period—during the Great Change. It is clear that, even if the term “Taika” was applied after the fact, people recognized that there was a sea change going on. That change is externally represented by the edicts and the change going on in the way the government was operating. However, this couldn’t have happened without at least the tacit approval of the rest of the elites. If Naka no Oe had just been a lone voice preaching the benefits of a more centralized state, with the sovereign at the top of a bureaucratic system that had never before been seen in the archipelago, then he could easily have been dismissed. The other members of the court could have effectively revolted, refusing to comply and possibly even forcing a change in government. And of course, that may have been part of what was behind the attempted revolt around Prince Furubito no Ohoye, which we talked about last episode.
However, enough people continued to side with Naka no Oe and Nakatomi no Kamatari and their ideas that any opposition was unable to overcome their momentum. So why?
I would suggest that this was the result and culmination of a new way of envisioning—of imagining, if you will—the Yamato state. It is an image that would have been familiar to the Chroniclers, and we see it throughout their narrative: the image of an imperial state, with the sovereign—known to the Chroniclers as the Sumera no Mikoto, or Tennou—at the very top. The Sumera no Mikoto, as the sovereign would eventually be known, held authority not only in the secular realm, but also in the spiritual—in the Buddhist and in matters of the kami. It envisioned the sovereign as the natural ruler of all of the archipelago, and even beyond.
This was an image that is very much in line with the thinking of continental scholars. It conforms, to a point, with Confucian and Buddhist ideas of what a Good Ruler should be, and, by extension, what the role of the State was and how the people should operate within that realm.
Prior to the 6th century, there had been another image of the sovereign—the image of the Oho-kimi. There are similarities—after all, power is power and humans are going to human. But there were clearly other prevailing ideas in play back then. We’ve talked about the idea of co-rulers, who ruled in tandem. And we’ve seen examples of female and male rulers at various levels of society. Spiritual authority came from the ability to intercede with the kami, and there were no native Buddhist traditions prior to 538—despite attempts by the Chroniclers to paint prior generations with the brush of Buddhist and Confucian morality. One’s place in society wasn’t dictated by their own personal accomplishments as much as it was the accomplishments of their extended family, though even some of that may have come about as late as the 5th or 6th centuries.
Perhaps more importantly, prior to the 6th century, the sovereign’s direct control only extended so far. They were the sovereign of Yamato, and though they may have had influence over others in the archipelago, they did not necessarily have direct control over their lands and people. By all accounts, the people owed their service not to the sovereign in Yamato, but to their local elites, who in turn may have had duties to those above them.
But along with books and immigrants from the continent, the people of the archipelago got new ideas of what the government should look like. These may have been foreign ideas, but over time we had new generations growing up with new and different examples of how things should work. These new ideas worked their way into their thinking about how elited should behave and act, and colored their image for what a proper State should look like. Sure, they understood how their own traditions worked, and that is still the mode under which they operated, but they were ready to change.
Some of this change started back in the era of Prince Umayado and the sovereign, Kashikiya Hime. Umayado’s purported 17 article constitution, as we noted, didn’t exactly lay out specific laws and punishments. It wasn’t a true legal code, though it was accompanied by a few legal changes, including the first attempt at a rank system for individuals. More importantly, though, it articulated a set of values on which the government should be founded. Whether or not these values were actually articulated to Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi, or even whether they were written down before the Chronicles were put together is debatable, but that whole episode certainly suggests that these kinds of ideas, which were rife with continental thought, were making their way into society.
And thus, Naka no Oe was able to suggest his and Karu’s reforms based on arguments that no doubt resonated with the people of the time, as many of those in government would have been reading similar texts. So even while it was seemingly against their immediate interests to give up control of labor or production, they had already been provided an exemplar of how this would work. They had a new imagination of what their culture should be and look like.
And that’s why I bring up the idea of a new cultural imaginary taking hold. A cultural imaginary is the collection of various shared values and concepts that a group envisions for themselves. If we think of modern countries, one can look at American culture, where there are shared values of freedom, individuality, etc. These are backed by common, shared ideas and stories—stories of the Founding Fathers, separating themselves from Great Britain, but also ideas of the Old West and concepts of the rugged cowboy on his horse. These stories and images help us to determine our shared values and understanding. It also tends to define the “us” versus “them”. Why are we the way we are and why are they different?
To be clear, these stories are not always true, and can change over time. Early visions of America included some people, but not everyone. Stories turned George Washington into an almost mythical figure, with an emphasis on his heroic qualities and his honesty. Our modern version of the Old West is often driven by what we saw in movies, which in turn were influenced by dime novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historical Old West tended to be quite different—and much more complex and diverse—than our modern visions of it.
We can see similar forces at work in the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki. These were written with the cultural values of the 8th century, and deliberately or not, their values are reflected back into the past, which is then what later generations would hold onto, defining their own image of who they were and how things should be.
When the cultural imaginary of what your society or culture should be conflicts with what people actually see happening, that often creates tension. That tension can be resolved in a variety of ways, but it often requires something to change. In this case, the cultural imaginaries of the elite had been flooded with examples of Confucian and Buddhist morals. The stories and values had been passed along with knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and more, in the media they were consuming from the continent. There were also those who had come from the continent—from Baekje, Silla, and beyond—who no doubt also had absorbed some of these stories and values and were passing them on, as well.
And so it wouldn’t have taken that much for Naka no Oe to point out how the system that they were laboring under differed from what a so-called “good” government should look like. So in a way, there was already buy-in for a change, at least at the top. And thus it appears as though Naka no Oe and Karu were able to get many of the elites to give up a measure of their own autonomy under the old system for the benefits of the new system that was being created. Mind you, it likely didn’t hurt that the throne was also ensuring that they gave out lavish gifts of silk, gold ingots, and hefty stipends to many of the more influential members of society as well.
There are still questions as to how much actually changed, initially. Sure, we see the edicts and an intent to change, and the local elites of Yamato seem to have been going along with it, but we don’t quite see how quickly these edicts were accepted in places like Izumo or Kibi, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, at least initially, many people just paid the edicts lip service, waiting to see whether or not they would actually be enforced. Still, these are definite changes away from the previous cultural norms.
Which leads into the next big edict, which focused on regulating tombs.
While the ancient burial mounds which could be called “kofun” continued to be built into the 8th century in one form or another, by most timelines, the Kofun period ended around 538 with the introduction of Buddhism and the start of what is known as the Asuka period. As we’ve noted, even the kingly tombs of the royal family from the end of the 6th century stopped relying on the round-keyhole shaped tomb shape. By the early 7th century the building of temples had become the new memorial for the ultra-wealthy of Yamato—a temple being a memorial that could be built before you passed and carry on your memory to later generations as a place of worship. This was no doubt helped by the idea that you would also accrue a fair bit of karma, the spiritual capital of the Buddhist worldview.
However, a mounded burial was still de rigeur for the elites and certain families, including those who had come over from the continent. The last keyhole style tombs known to have been built appear to be out in modern Chiba prefecture, in the Kanto region, in the first half of the 7th century. From then on, we largely see round, square, or octagonal tombs. Some of the latest tombs that we know of, in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, show clear signs of continental influence. Kitora kofun and Takamatsuzuka Kofun, both in the Asuka area, are decorated in ways similar to tombs in Goguryeo, including paintings of the four directional animals mentioned in the Liji, the Confucian Book of Rites: Suzaku, the red bird of the south; Byakko, the white tiger of the west; Genbu, the black tortoise of the north; and Seiryuu, the blue dragon of the east. Takamatsuzuka also contains murals of courtiers dressed in clothing that would be quite at home on the continent and which looks quite different from the clothing seen on haniwa figures from only a century or so earlier.
Tombs were also more likely to be clustered together, and often only contained a single burial, rather than evidence of a double burial. This was likely influenced by the edict of 646. That edict also gives us ideas on what was considered to be reasonable for that era, and provides some of our best descriptions in the written record to help us better understand tomb construction.
I would also note that the court had moved to Naniwa, and near to Naniwa were some of the largest of the kofun, including Daisen-ryo, the largest kofun in Japan and one of the largest mausoleums in the entire world. So perhaps that was also influencing their thoughts.
The edict starts out noting that large, mounded tombs are wasteful. This shouldn’t be a surprise: large tombs were always about conspicuous consumption as a sign of the wealth and power of the occupant and their family. As noted earlier, however, a lot of that seems to have shifted to the building of temples, and as such, tombs were no longer seen as something to waste resources on. However, since it was still tradition, it was still happening, hence the edict.
And so it goes on to limit the size of the tombs. At the largest, it says a tomb should be no more than about nine shaku wide and 5 shaku wide on the inside—one shaku being approximately 1 foot—and no more then 9 hiro to a side and 5 hiro in height. A “Hiro” was an ancient measure that was generally the length of two outspread arms. This was about 5 shaku, or 5 feet.    That means that we are still talking about a mound 45 feet on a side, which is nothing to sneeze at. But this size was reserved for princes and up. The Daijin—the great ministers of State—could have similar inner dimensions for their sarcophagus, but the outside was limited to only seven hiro to a side and three hiro in height. Lesser ministers only got 5 hiro to a side and 2.5 hiro in height, while others were allocated no mound at all, and a smaller inner chamber.
In addition, the number of laborers and how long they could work on a tomb was also capped. The largest tombs were allotted 1,000 laborers for 7 days. The Daijin received 500 laborers over 5 days. Other ministers received 250 laborers for 3 days, while below that you received 100 laborers for 1 day or 50 laborers for no more than 1 day. Here we see the state once again asserting itself into the relationship between the various individuals and the laborers—previously, an elite family would have just used as many laborers as they had private access to, but now things were being regulated and it was all based on your rank and position within the civil service of the new government.
In addition, how the deceased was delivered to the monument also was regulated. A carriage was permitted for the highest ranked individuals—the members of the royal family. Ministers could be placed on a bier and carried by pall-bearers. No mention is made of people of the lower class, with the assumption that they likely didn’t get such a ceremony.
White cloth hangings were allowed in many cases—white is practical, in that it isn’t dyed and so it wouldn’t be as expensive, but it was also considered the color of death in Buddhist and continental tradition, so not surprising. They also allowed small stones to be used for princes down to the rank of “sho-chi”—that was the lowest official rank. These stones could refer to several things, and we aren’t quite sure. According to Aston, the compilers of the “shukai” edition of the Nihon Shoki attributed this to memorial stones set up with inscriptions about the deceased, but as he points out, we haven’t found anything that really correlates to that. Aston instead suggests that what is meant are the stones used to build the roof of the main chamber. If you look at tombs like Ishibutai kofun, you can see the large stones used there, but this may be referring to something similar, possibly using smaller stones that took less effort to haul into place. There were also stones used on the outside to decorate the kofun back in the day, and I suppose that they could have meant that as well.
More than just regulations, there were prohibitions placed on burials. For one thing, the concept of a temporary interment was discontinued for everyone. In the past, a body would be buried or even placed in a hut for some time and then the burial would take place at a later date. There are several reasons this may have been done in the past, from the purely ritual to the more practical. However, that was no longer considered to be appropriate. Likewise, commoners were required to be buried within a day of their death. This goes along with talk about reducing “pollution”, which may have referred to spiritual as much as physical pollution, and so plots of ground were set aside specifically for burials, and people were not allowed to be buried outside of those official locations. That could certainly help explain why we see more clusters of burials in this later period. Using the sides of hills and ridges may have also meant that the tombs didn’t take up important agricultural lands.
There were also prohibitions on sacrifices to the dead. For one thing, nobody was permitted to sacrifice themselves through strangulation—which apparently had been a thing even though we are told that human sacrifice was prohibited back in the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and the reason that haniwa were invented. You also weren’t allowed to sacrifice someone’s horse or bury valuables along with the dead. These are all things that we see in the early mounded tomb culture, including burials in the Kara, or Gaya, region of the Korean peninsula, and we certainly find plenty of grave goods in the archipelago. It makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons that painted tombs, like Kitora and Takamatsuzuka, were used, perhaps in place of more lavish grave goods going into the burial. There was also a prohibition on an apparent custom where people would cut their hair and stab themselves in the thigh prior to pronouncing a eulogy. Similar traditions are found elsewhere, often to emphasize that people were grieving the dead.
And since you can’t punish the dead, if there were any problems then it would be the dead person’s relatives who would be punished, instead.
Speaking of punishments, this starts to get into a part of the Taika reforms that really focuses on the various offenses that people were apparently committing and needed to be stopped. It is unclear to me how often these offenses occurred, and in some cases I wonder if they were things that were actually happening or if they were carryovers from the continental tradition. Still, I tend to come down on the idea that these were likely things that were actually happening, and didn’t fit in with the social norms and values that Naka no Oe and his cohorts were attempting to put in place. Some of these will likely resonate with us, today, but others are a bit more difficult to fully grasp.
One of the things that is perhaps most difficult for us to grasp today is the concept of “harai”, which Aston translates as “purgation” and is most commonly translated, today, as “purification”. “Harai” is an important concept in Shinto, and has been something that seems to have been there in some form from the earliest times.
In Shinto there is a concept of “pollution” or “tsumi” that can occur, and it may or may not be something that a person has control over. For example, blood and death are forms of pollution—which also means that, by extension, birth also includes pollution in the form of blood. “Tsumi” can also be something that occurs because of things that a person does, where they break the social mores or norms. A number of examples are contained in the stories provided during the Age of the Gods. In particular, you can see in the tales of Izanagi and Izanami, where Izanagi, coming back from the land of the dead, dips himself into the ocean to wash away any impurities—any pollution. We talked about that back in episode 14. In episode 15, we talked about some of the not-so-great actions of Susano’o. Some of these, like the backwards flaying of the colt and flinging it through the roof of his sister’s building is somewhat obvious. But then there were things like moving the stakes delineating the rice fields, or letting livestock in to trample the young growth. Those were some other examples of tsumi that were part of the many things that got him kicked out of Takamagahara, the High Plain of Heaven.
An important thing here is that tsumi is not necessarily about a person’s intentions, motives, nor responsibility. For all types of tsumi, some form of harai, or purification, is called for. Today, there are various ceremonies that can be performed by Shinto priests to help remove the effects of tsumi, and that seems to have been the case back in the Kofun and Asuka periods as well, but there was a catch: it wasn’t without costs. And apparently those costs could be significant—significant enough that it was almost like a kind of punishment. Aston suggests that harai could include various payments, perhaps seen as a kind of sacrifice, but that could be more than some people could afford. If we look back on the story of Susano’o, he had to have his hair and nails cut as part of his penance—his harai. There is also some thought that this may have just been a literal payment to the community, like a fine. I would note that “harai” can mean either purification or payment, depending on the kanji used.
So just keep that in mind when we talk about “harai”.
Now here are some of the things that, according to the new edicts, people were to stop doing.
First, there were people who saw or heard something—presumably something important—and yet they wouldn’t say anything. That wasn’t going to fly anymore. So I guess this is the pro-snitching rule—if you see something, say something.
Then there were enslaved people who apparently would leave poor masters to find someone wealthier to serve, hoping to improve their lot. Again, this was right out. We are reminded that Yamato was a slave-holding society, and they weren’t going to allow that.
On the other hand, the new rules also put a stop to husbands who would dismiss their wives and then, when the wives remarried, try to make a claim on the new husband’s property. Similarly, there were some men who demanded a family’s daughter for his wife, but before they consummate the marriage, she marries someone else. In some of those cases, the men would, again, make demands on the property of the new husband’s family as well as the wife’s family. The new edict put that strictly out of bounds.
Following on a theme of women and marriage: there was a tradition in some places that widows who, when they married after 10 or 20 years, or even unmarried women got married for the first time, they would be forced by the community to pay for some kind of “harai”. This, along with the other practice mentioned, was forbidden. No longer would they have to pay for getting married.
Now in some cases, it looks like men who wanted to divorce their wives wouldn’t just let them out of the arrangement. Rather, they would sell their wives into slavery—another thing that the new edicts said would no longer be tolerated.
And then there was the case of a man who believed his wife was having an affair. In that case he now had to obtain at least three credible witnesses before bringing it up to the authorities. One presumes this was to protect women from men simply making a baseless claim with no proof. Not that a determined man couldn’t find—or even bribe—three witnesses to come forward and accuse his wife, but it at least upped the ante a little bit. Whether this was to provide protection to women or whether it was just to reduce the amount of work on government officials who would have to investigate and come to a decision isn’t exactly clear.
I would note that while many of these new rules were coming down on the side of protecting women, to some degree, there is still a very heavy patriarchal bias demonstrated throughout.
In addition to all the information on marital affairs, there were a few other, unrelated issues, but all of them were connected to the need to do harai. And now we come back to our story about poor Maro and Sumi from the beginning of the episode: let’s say a man, finishing his forced labor, is returning back when he falls ill on the road and dies in some village. According to established traditions, the people there could then require his companions or even family members to perform harai—presumably meaning that they would have to pay the village something or at least pay for the ritual cleansing, to compensate for the tsumi that the death caused. Similarly, if someone were to drown, his companions would be held responsible. Even if someone were to stop and cook rice by the roadside while traveling, they could be made to perform harai. And the harai for all of this was so onerous that we are told that even a younger brother might completely ignore the body of his elder brother, just to avoid being associated with him and thus forced to perform harai.
In all of these cases, the edict said that this would no longer be acceptable. You couldn’t just put the squeeze on someone to perform harai just because their companion happened to pass away.
Being on the road and traveling—especially for official government service—was clearly something that was on their mind. Moving on from the list of things that were to be discontinued without exception, there were a few other cases that were dealt with in the same edict.
First, there was the case where peasants, heading to the capital, would leave their horses with someone in Owari or Mikawa, for example. They would leave cloth and bundles of hemp as payment for the person to look after their horses, and even procure a spade as a gift when they returned. However, when they got back, they would find that their horse had died, or else the horse had been sold, but the owner was told it had died. The last trick, if it was a mare, was to get the mare pregnant and then claim that the pregnancy had polluted their house, therefore the owner would have to do harai, meaning that the horse usually ended up staying with the person who was supposed to be holding onto it.
The solution was to use the new bureaucracy. The owner and the person who agreed to keep the horse would make their statement to the village elder and the owner would hand over the renumeration to the elder as the third party. This payment would be held by the elder until the owner returned, at which point it was handed over to the person who had kept the horse. This way the person keeping the horse knew that he would be paid for his troubles, but only if the horse was still around when the owner returned.
So they effectively invented the concept of escrow.
I suspect that such a system could be applied to many other such endeavors as well, where there was otherwise no guarantee of payment at the end of a task nor guarantee that the task would completed as agreed if they got the money up front.
Besides that, the edict also had a short note about dues payable to Market Commissioners for main roads and to ferrymen—likely various fees. Instead, these kinds of positions would be granted rice-land which could be cultivated and they could receive a stipend from that.
Finally, during the key agricultural months, everybody was to be working on cultivating rice-land. The edict specifically calls out that they should not eat dainty food nor drink sake, I suspect because dainty food wouldn’t give you enough energy and drinking sake would impair your ability in the field. Each quarter, the Kuni no Miyatsuko were to send messengers to remind the people of this edict—a kind of human public service announcement.
So all of that was part of an edict on the 22nd day of the 3rd month of 646. I am not sure that there is a clear theme to all of it, other than calling out old practices and describing how things would be done from here on out. There is clearly a concern with harai and how it would affect people’s willingness to do the right thing.
The next set of pronouncements would come almost five months later, and a lot of that had to do with names, as well as further work on the creation of the government bureaucracy, but that is going to take a lot more time, and so I think that for now we’ll end this here: The link between the state and laborers has been changed, the tomb-building has been strictly regulated, and a series of rather specific pronouncements and prohibitions has been issued.
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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

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