n the
following year to 50 to 10. Altogether, as was not unnatural, the
early treatment of this coinage question by Japanese statesmen showed
no trace of scientific perception. The practice, pursued almost
invariably, of multiplying by ten the purchasing power of each new
issue of sen, proved, of course, enormously profitable to the
issuers, but could not fail to distress the people and to render
unpopular such arbitrarily varying tokens.

The Government spared no effort to correct the latter result, and
some of the devices employed were genuinely progressive. In that
epoch travellers had to carry their own provisions, and not
uncommonly the supply ran short before they reached their
destination, the result sometimes being death from starvation on the
roadside. It was therefore ordered that in every district (korf) a
certain portion of rice should be stored at a convenient place for
sale to wayfarers, and these were advised to provide themselves with
a few sen before setting out. It is evident that, since one of the
Wado coins sufficed to buy rice for twelve days' rations, a traveller
was not obliged to burden himself with many of these tokens. Wealthy
persons in the provinces were also admonished to set up roadside
shops for the sale of rice, and anyone who thus disposed of one
hundred koku in a year was to be reported to the Court for special
reward. Moreover, no district governor (gunryo), however competent,
was counted eligible for promotion unless he had saved six thousand
sen, and it was enacted that all taxes might be paid in copper coin.
In spite of all this, however, the use of metallic media was limited
for a long time to the upper classes and to the inhabitants of the
five home provinces. Elsewhere the old habit of barter continued.

THE FORTY-FOURTH SOVEREIGN, THE EMPRESS GENSHO (A.D. 715-723)

In the year 715, the Empress Gemmyo, after a reign of seven years,
abdicated in favour of her daughter, Gensho. This is the only
instance in Japanese history of an Empress succeeding an Empress.

HISTORICAL COMPILATION

The reigns of these two Empresses are memorable for the compilation
of the two oldest Japanese histories which have been handed down to
the present epoch, the Kojiki and the Nihongi; but as the
circumstances in which these works, as well as the Fudoki (Records of
Natural Features), were written have been sufficiently described
already (vide Chapter I), it remains only to refer to a custom
inaugu