Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/385

The significance of the land-tax reform is manifest from the preceding summary. Land being, after all, the basis of our material life, there can be no question about the importance of a radical change in the system of land tenure. Indeed, the land-tax reform ushered in social conditions under which a free play of the economic forces of the country became possible. The general principle that the tax-paying duty of the people should be regulated by proper laws was also implied in and exemplified by the land-tax legislation—a principle afterwards guaranteed by a provision of the Constitution.

As regards the revenue of the Government, it was natural in the early years of the present era that by far the largest portion of it should come from the land tax, because Japan of old was essentially an agricultural country, and other industries on a large scale were yet to be started under the new régime. Even in 1881, the year in which the land-tax reform was completed, the yield of the land tax, which was then the sole direct national tax, amounted to 42,000,000 yen in the totality of tax revenues of 60,000,000 yen. A fundamental source of the national revenue was thus furnished by the land tax. But, to meet the increasing needs of the rapidly progressing country, it was necessary to seek, besides the comparatively stationary land tax, such sources of revenue as would automatically augment in proportion to the growth of national wealth. Hence the new Government, sifting the miscellaneous taxes that had existed under the Shogunate, imposed certain indirect taxes, and in 1887 introduced the income tax as a new direct tax. Among the indirect taxes, the saké tax has always occupied the foremost place, though in former times there was no fixed system of taxing alcoholic drinks. The adoption of the present basis of taxation—the amount of saké brewed in the measure of koku^[1]—dates from 1878. The rate of the saké tax, which had been gradually raised since then, stood at four yen per koku before the carrying out of the post-bellum programme.

After the war of 1894–95 the national expenditure increased by leaps and bounds in consequence of the various schemes purposed to equip the country for facing the new situation in the Far East. The extraordinary expenditures were to be met by the war indemnity and public loans, but to meet the increase of the ordinary expenditures there was no other choice but to increase the taxes, which means has been thrice resroted to—first in 1896, then in 1899, and lastly in 1901. The increase in the annual revenue resulting from the post-bellum augmentations of taxation is estimated at 95,000,000 yen.

Thus, while post-bellum the programme included the impo-