The transformation of the Ritsuryo State

Abstract

The research that has been done on the ancient Japanese state governed under the ritsuryo 律令 codes, which is based on the pioneering work of historians Ishimoda Sho and Yoshida Takashi, has recently been deepened by Otsu Tooru in his comparison with the Tang Dynasty. However, research has yet to be done on the Ritsuryo State from the point of view of fiscal administration on the local level and how this local character was transformed beginning in the tenth century. The present article is an attempt to delve into such matters. Local matters of the Ritsuryo State system were put in charge of sub-provincial district (gun 郡) administrators (gunji 郡司), who were supervised by the central government through provincial governors (kokushi 国司), whose performance was monitored by inspectors called yodo-no-tsukai 四度使. These central government inspectors submitted reports on both local administrative and fiscal affairs during the term of office of each successive governor. Local fiscal administration was based on taxes levied on yields of arable land allocated by the state to individuals (so 租), a part of which was accumulated in district storehouses as shozei 正税, and lent to cultivators at interest to defray administrative expenses. In this sense, the ritsuryo system was operated on a dual structure. The momentum for the system's transformation was provided by growing ties of dependency between members of the central aristocracy and commoners to whom land had been allocated (hyaku-sho 百姓) in the midst of a decline in the administrative authority of gun administrators. The central government began appoint ing tax farmers as deputy provincial governors (zuryo 受領) to take direct control over the hyakusho under their jurisdictions. Ac cording to the procedure that was instituted in a ministry of state order issued in 902 AD, the central government and provincial/districts were to allocate arable land to local hyakusho and collect from them a part of the harvest (sozei 租税) and a part o the fruits of their labor (choyo 調庸), together referred to as kanmotsu 官物, resulting in a system that fiscally unified the center and the provinces. This system, characterized politically as a "dynastic" state (ochokokka 王朝国家) was fiscally supported by taxes collected in accordance with the ritsuryo codes being channeled into stipends and rewards for the central aristo-bureaucracy (including state controlled religious institutions) on the strength of tax farming and proxy provincial administration conducted by zuryo. In addition to stipends from public tax stores, both the secular and religious aristocracy was allowed tax exemptions on their own proprietary holdings and permitted to organize their own labor forces (yoriudo 寄人) However, such privileges were not the results of grabbing exclusionary or feudal rights of coercion and ownership, but rather depended on controlling the administrative mechanism linking the center and the provinces. The result was a totally centralizes political entity created by unifying the dual structure characterizing the Ritsurvo State.