ho era, like those of the Daika, were based
on the hypothesis that all land throughout the country was the
property of the Crown, and that upon the latter devolved the
responsibility of equitable distribution among the people. Rice being
the chief staple of diet and also the standard of exchange,
rice-lands--that is to say, irrigated fields--were regarded as most
important. The law--already referred to in connexion with the Daika
era but here cited again for the sake of clearness--enacted that all
persons, on attaining the age of five, became entitled to two tan of
such land, females receiving two-thirds of that amount. Land thus
allotted was called kubun-den, or "sustenance land" (literally,
"mouth-share land"). The tan was taken for unit, because it
represented 360 bu (or ho), and as the rice produced on one bu
constituted one day's ration for an adult male, a tan yielded enough
for one year (the year being 360 days).*

*The bu in early times represented 5 shaku square, or 25 square shaku
(1 seki = 1 foot very nearly); but as the shaku (10 sun) then
measured 2 sun (1 sun = 1.2 inch) more than the shaku of later ages,
the modern bu (or tsubo) is a square of 6 shaku side, or 36 square
shaku, though in actual dimensions the ancient and the modern are
equal.

The theory of distribution was that the produce of one tan served for
food, while with the produce of the second tan the cost of clothes
and so forth was defrayed. The Daika and Daiho legislators alike laid
down the principle that rice-fields thus allotted should be held for
a period of six years only, after which they were to revert to the
Crown for redistribution, and various detailed regulations were
compiled to meet contingencies that might arise in carrying out the
system. But, of course, it proved quite unpracticable, and though
that lesson obviously remained unlearned during the cycle that
separated the Daika and the Daiho periods, there is good reason to
think that these particular provisions of the land law (Den-ryo) soon
became a dead letter.

A different method was pursued, however, in the case of uplands (as
distinguished from wet fields). These--called onchi*--were parcelled
out among the families residing in a district, without distinction
of age or sex, and were held in perpetuity, never reverting to the
Crown unless a family became extinct. Such land might be bought or
sold--except to a Buddhist temple--but its tenure was conditional
upon plantin