r one life"
worked smoothly enough; but subsequently it was found that as the
limit of time approached, farmers neglected to till the land and
suffered it to lie waste. Therefore, in the year 743, the Government
enacted that all reclaimed land should be counted the perpetual
property of the reclaimer, with one proviso, namely, that three years
of neglect to cultivate should involve confiscation. The recognition
of private ownership was not unlimited. An area of five hundred cho
(1250 acres) was fixed as the superior limit, applicable only to the
case of a "First Class" prince, the quantities being thereafter on a
sliding scale down to ten cho (twenty-five acres). Any excess
resulting from previous accretions was to revert to the State.
Evidently the effective operation of such a system predicated
accurate surveys and strict supervision. Neither of these conditions
existed in Japan at that remote period. The prime purpose of the
legislators was achieved, since the people devoted themselves
assiduously to land reclamation; but by free recourse to their power
of commanding labour, the great families acquired estates largely in
excess of the legal limit. A feature of the Nara epoch was the
endowment of the Buddhist temples with land by men of all classes,
and the sho-en, or temple domain, thus came into existence.

STOCK FARMING

Information on the subject of stock farming is scanty and indirect,
but in the year 713 we find a rescript ordering the provincials of
Yamashiro to provide and maintain fifty milch-cows, and in 734,
permission was given that all the districts in the Tokai-do, the
Tosan-do, and the Sanin-do might trade freely in cattle and horses.
Seven years later (741), when Shomu occupied the throne, and when
Buddhism spread its protecting mantle over all forms of life, an
edict appeared condemning anyone who killed a horse or an ox to be
flogged with a hundred strokes and to be fined heavily. Only one
other reference to stock farming appears in the annals of the Nara
epoch: the abolition of the two pastures at Osumi and Himeshima in
the province of Settsu was decreed in 771, but no reason is recorded.

SERICULTURE

From the remotest times sericulture was assiduously practised in
Japan, the ladies of the Imperial Court, from the Empress downwards,
taking an active part in the pursuit. The wave of Buddhist zeal which
swept over Japan in the eighth century gave a marked impulse to this
branch of industry, for