on to rice culture only and neglecting upland
crops, so that, in the event of a failure of the former, the latter
did not constitute a substitute. It was therefore ordered that barley
and millet should be assiduously grown, and each farmer was required
to lay down two tan (2/3 acre) annually of these upland cereals.
Repeated proclamations during the eighth century bear witness to
official solicitude in this matter, and in 723 there is recorded a
distribution of two koku (nearly ten bushels) of seeds, ten feet of
cotton cloth, and a hoe (kuwa) to each agriculturist throughout the
empire. Such largesse suggests a colossal operation, but, in fact, it
meant little more than the remission of about a year's taxes.
Necessarily, as the population increased, corresponding extension of
the cultivated area became desirable, and already, in the year 722, a
work of reclamation on a grand scale was officially undertaken by
organizing a body of peasants and sending them to bring under culture
a million cho (two and a half million acres) of new land. This
interesting measure is recorded without any details whatever.

Private initiative was also liberally encouraged. An Imperial
rescript promised that any farmer harvesting three thousand koku
(fifteen thousand bushels) of cereals from land reclaimed by himself
should receive the sixth class order of merit (kun roku-to), while a
crop of over a thousand koku and less than three thousand would carry
lifelong exemption from forced labour. The Daika principle that the
land was wholly the property of the Crown had thus to yield partially
to the urgency of the situation, and during the third decade of the
eighth century it was enacted that, if a man reclaimed land by
utilizing aqueducts and reservoirs already in existence, the land
should belong to him for his lifetime, while if the reservoirs and
aqueducts were of his own construction, the right of property should
be valid for three generations.* From the operation of this law the
provincial governors were excepted; the usufruct of lands reclaimed
by them was limited to the term of their tenure of office, though, as
related already, legislation in their case varied greatly from time
to time.

*This system was called Sansei-isshin no ho. It is, perhaps,
advisable to note that the Daika system of dividing the land for
sustenance purposes applied only to land already under cultivation.

For a certain period the system of "three generations, o