with Korea. As the eminent historian, Rai Sanyo, said in
later times, her soldiers were wearied by constant campaigns oversea,
and her agriculturists were exhausted by frequent requisitions for
supplies. During the epoch of Jingo and Ojin, Japan was palpably
inferior to her peninsular neighbour in civilization, in wealth, and
in population. But in one respect the superiority was largely on her
side; namely, in the quality of her soldiers. Therefore, she utilized
her military strength for campaigns which cost comparatively little
and produced much. The peninsula, at that time, verified the term
commonly applied to it, Uchi-tsurmiyake, or the "Granary of the
Home-land." But as the material development of Japan and her
civilization progressed, she stood constantly to lose more and gain
less by despatching expeditions to a land which squandered much of
its resources on internecine quarrels and was deteriorating by
comparison. The task of maintaining Mimana and succouring Kudara then
became an obligation of prestige which gradually ceased to interest
the nation.

FINANCE

In the period now under consideration no system of land taxation had
yet come into existence. The requirements of the Court were met by
the produce of the mi-agata (Imperial domains), and rice for public
use was grown in the miyake districts, being there stored and devoted
to the administrative needs of the region. Occasionally the contents
of several miyake were collected into one district, as, for example,
when (A.D. 536) the Emperor Senkwa ordered a concentration of
foodstuffs in Tsukushi. The miyake were the property of the Crown, as
were also a number of hereditary corporations (be), whose members
discharged duties, from building and repairing palaces--no light
task, seeing that the site of the palace was changed with each change
of occupant--to sericulture, weaving, tailoring, cooking, and arts
and handicrafts of all descriptions, each be exercising its own
function from generation to generation, and being superintended by
its own head-man (obito or atae).

Any insufficiency in the supplies furnished by the sovereign's own
people was made good by levying on the tomo-no-miyatsuko. It will be
seen that there was no annual tax regularly imposed on the people in
general, though universal requisitions were occasionally made to meet
the requirements of public works, festivals or military operations.
Hence when it is said that the Emperor Nintoku remitt