Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

The Ghost of Sakura
The misfortunes and death of the farmer Sôgorô, which, although the
preternatural appearances by which they are said to have been followed
may raise a smile, are matters of historic notoriety with which every
Japanese is familiar, furnish a forcible illustration of the relations which
exist between the tenant and the lord of the soil, and of the boundless
power for good or for evil exercised by the latter. It is rather remarkable
that in a country where the peasant—placed as he is next to the soldier,
and before the artisan and merchant, in the four classes into which the
people are divided—enjoys no small consideration, and where agriculture
is protected by law from the inroads of wild vegetation, even to the
lopping of overshadowing branches and the cutting down of hedgerow
timber, the lord of the manor should be left practically without control in
his dealings with his people.
The land-tax, or rather the yearly rent paid by the tenant, is usually assessed
at forty per cent. of the produce; but there is no principle clearly
defining it, and frequently the landowner and the cultivator divide the
proceeds of the harvest in equal shapes. Rice land is divided into three
classes; and, according to these classes, it is computed that one tan (1,800
square feet) of the best land should yield to the owner a revenue of five
bags of rice per annum; each of these bags holds four tô (a tô is rather
less than half an imperial bushel), and is worth at present (1868) three
riyos, or about sixteen shillings; land of the middle class should yield a
revenue of three or four bags. The rent is paid either in rice or in money,
according to the actual price of the grain, which varies considerably. It is
due in the eleventh month of the year, when the crops have all been
gathered, and their market value fixed.
The rent of land bearing crops other than rice, such as cotton, beans,
roots, and so forth, is payable in money during the twelfth month. The
choice of the nature of the crops to be grown appears to be left to the
tenant.
The Japanese landlord, when pressed by poverty, does not confine
himself to the raising of his legitimate rents: he can always enforce from
his needy tenantry the advancement of a year's rent, or the loan of so
much money as may be required to meet his immediate necessities.
Should the lord be just, the peasant is repaid by instalments, with interest,
extending over ten or twenty years. But it too often happens that
unjust and merciless lords do not repay such loans, but, on the contrary,
press for further advances. Then it is that the farmers, dressed in their
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