Chapter XV

). Mommu, dying, willed that the throne should be occupied by his mother in trust for his infant son--afterwards Emperor Shomu.

REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL TO NARA

In ancient times it was customary to change the locality of the Imperial capital with each change of sovereign. This custom, dictated by the Shinto conception of impurity attaching to sickness and death, exercised a baleful influence on architectural development, and constituted a heavy burden upon the people, whose forced labour was largely requisitioned for the building of the new palace. Kotoku, when he promulgated his system of centralized administration, conceived the idea of a fixed capital and selected Naniwa. But the Emperor Tenchi moved to Omi, Temmu to Asuka (in Yamato) and the Empress Jito to Fujiwara (in Yamato). Mommu remained at the latter place until the closing year (707) of his reign, when, finding the site inconvenient, he gave orders for the selection of another. But his death interrupted the project, and it was not until the second year of the Empress Gemmyo's reign that the Court finally removed to Nara, where it remained for seventy-five years, throughout the reigns of seven sovereigns. Nara, in the province of Yamato, lies nearly due south of Kyoto at a distance of twenty-six miles from the latter. History does not say why it was selected, nor have any details of its plan been transmitted. To-day it is celebrated for scenic beauties--a spacious park with noble trees and softly contoured hills, sloping down to a fair expanse of lake, and enshrining in their dales ancient temples, wherein are preserved many fine specimens of Japanese art, glyptic and pictorial, of the seventh and eighth centuries. Nothing remains of the palace where the Court resided throughout a cycle and a half, nearly twelve hundred years ago, but one building, a storehouse called Shoso-in, survives in its primitive form and constitutes a landmark in the annals of Japanese civilization, for it contains specimens of all the articles that were in daily use by the sovereigns of the Nara epoch.

JAPANESE COINS

There is obscurity about the production of the precious metals in old Japan. That gold, silver, and copper were known and used is certain, for in the dolmens,--which ceased to be built from about the close of the sixth century (A.D.)--copper ear-rings plated with gold are found, and gold-copper images of Buddha were made in the reign of the Empress Suiko (605), while history says that silver was discovered in the island of Tsushima in the second year of the Emperor Temmu's reign (674). From the same island, gold also is recorded to have come in 701, but in the case of the yellow and the white metal alike, the supply obtained was insignificant, and indeed modern historians are disposed to doubt whether the alleged Tsushima gold was not in reality brought from Korea via that island. On the whole, the evidence tends to show that, during the first seven centuries of the Christian era, Japan relied on Korea mainly, and on China partially, for her supply of the precious metals. Yet neither gold, silver, nor copper coins seem to have been in anything like general use until the Wado era (708-715).

Coined money had already been a feature of Chinese civilization since the fourth century before Christ, and when Japan began to take models from her great neighbour during the Sui and Tang dynasties, she cannot have failed to appreciate the advantages of artificial media of exchange. The annals allege that in A.D. 677 the first mint was established, and that in 683 an ordinance prescribed that the silver coins struck there should be superseded by copper. But this rule did not remain long in force, nor have there survived any coins, whether of silver or of copper, certainly identifiable as antecedent to the Wado era. It was in the year of the Empress Gemmyo's accession (708) that deposits of copper were found in the Chichibu district of Musashi province, and the event seemed sufficiently important to call for a change of year-name to Wado (refined copper). Thenceforth, coins of copper--or more correctly, bronze--were regularly minted and gradually took the place of rice or cotton cloth as units of value.

It would seem that, from the close of the seventh century, a wave of mining industry swept over Japan. Silver was procured from the provinces of Iyo and Kii; copper from Inaba and Suo, and tin from Ise, Tamba, and Iyo. All this happened between the years 690 and 708, but the discovery of copper in the latter year in Chichibu was on comparatively the largest scale, and may be said to have given the first really substantial impetus to coining. For some unrecorded reason silver pieces were struck first and were followed by copper a few months later. Both were of precisely the same form--round with a square hole in the middle to facilitate threading on a string--both were of the same denomination (one won), and both bore the same superscription (Wado Kaiho, or "opening treasure of refined copper"), the shape, the denomination, and the legend being taken from a coin of the Tang dynasty struck eighty-eight years previously. It was ordered that in using these pieces silver should be paid in the case of sums of or above four mon, and copper in the case of sums of or below three won, the value of the silver coin being four times that of the copper. But the silver tokens soon ceased to be current and copper mainly occupied the field, a position which it held for 250 years, from 708 to 958. During that interval, twelve forms of sen* were struck. They deteriorated steadily in quality, owing to growing scarcity of the supply of copper; and, partly to compensate for the increased cost of the metal, partly to minister to official greed, the new issues were declared, on several occasions, to have a value ten times as great as their immediate predecessors. Concerning that value, the annals state that in 711 the purchasing power of the mon (i.e., of the one-sen token) was sixty go of rice, and as the daily ration for a full-grown man is five go, it follows that one sen originally sufficed for twelve days' sustenance.**

*The ideograph sen signified originally a "fountain," and its employment to designate a coin seems to have been suggested by an idea analogous to that underlying the English word "currency."

**"At the present time the wages of a carpenter are almost a yen a day. Now the yen is equal to 1000 mon of the smaller sen and to 500 mon of the larger ones, so that he could have provided himself with rice, if we count only 500 mon to the yen, for sixteen years on the wages which he receives for one day's labour in 1900." (Munro's Coins of Japan.)

Much difficulty was experienced in weaning the people from their old custom of barter and inducing them to use coins. The Government seems to have recognized that there could not be any effective spirit of economy so long as perishable goods represented the standard of value, and in order to popularize the use of the new tokens as well as to encourage thrift, it was decreed that grades of rank would be bestowed upon men who had saved certain sums in coin. At that time (711), official salaries had already been fixed in terms of the Wado sen. The highest received thirty pieces of cloth, one hundred hanks of silk and two thousand mon, while in the case of an eighth-class official the corresponding figures were one piece of cloth and twenty mon.* The edict for promoting economy embodied a schedule according to which, broadly speaking, two steps of executive rank could be gained by amassing twenty thousand mon and one step by saving five thousand.

*These figures sound ludicrously small if translated into present-day money, for 1000 mon go to the yen, and the latter being the equivalent of two shillings, 20 mon represents less then a half-penny. But of course the true calculation is that 20 mon represented 240 days' rations of rice in the Wado schedule of values.

Observing that the fundamental principle of a sound token of exchange was wholly disregarded in these Wado sen, since their intrinsic value bore no appreciable ratio to their purchasing power, and considering also the crudeness of their manufacture, it is not surprising to find that within a few months of their appearance they were extensively forged. What is much more notable is that the Wado sen remained in circulation for fifty years. The extraordinary ratio, however, by which copper and silver were linked together originally, namely, 4 to 1, did not survive; in 721 it was changed to 25 to 10, and in the following year to 50 to 10. Altogether, as was not unnatural, the early treatment of this coinage question by Japanese statesmen showed no trace of scientific perception. The practice, pursued almost invariably, of multiplying by ten the purchasing power of each new issue of sen, proved, of course, enormously profitable to the issuers, but could not fail to distress the people and to render unpopular such arbitrarily varying tokens.

The Government spared no effort to correct the latter result, and some of the devices employed were genuinely progressive. In that epoch travellers had to carry their own provisions, and not uncommonly the supply ran short before they reached their destination, the result sometimes being death from starvation on the roadside. It was therefore ordered that in every district (korf) a certain portion of rice should be stored at a convenient place for sale to wayfarers, and these were advised to provide themselves with a few sen before setting out. It is evident that, since one of the Wado coins sufficed to buy rice for twelve days' rations, a traveller was not obliged to burden himself with many of these tokens. Wealthy persons in the provinces were also admonished to set up roadside shops for the sale of rice, and anyone who thus disposed of one hundred koku in a year was to be reported to the Court for special reward. Moreover, no district governor (gunryo), however competent, was counted eligible for promotion unless he had saved six thousand sen, and it was enacted that all taxes might be paid in copper coin. In spite of all this, however, the use of metallic media was limited for a long time to the upper classes and to the inhabitants of the five home provinces. Elsewhere the old habit of barter continued.

THE FORTY-FOURTH SOVEREIGN, THE EMPRESS GENSHO (A.D. 715-723)

In the year 715, the Empress Gemmyo, after a reign of seven years, abdicated in favour of her daughter, Gensho. This is the only instance in Japanese history of an Empress succeeding an Empress.

HISTORICAL COMPILATION

The reigns of these two Empresses are memorable for the compilation of the two oldest Japanese histories which have been handed down to the present epoch, the Kojiki and the Nihongi; but as the circumstances in which these works, as well as the Fudoki (Records of Natural Features), were written have been sufficiently described already (vide