The court and its provincesto time. Often, moreover, it is not easy to draw a sharp line between the ruling and the ruled. For
the classical era, we can differentiate between the members of the central elite—including the
royal house, court nobility, and great religious institutions—on the one hand, and the members
of the regional elites—many of who had roots in the class of pre- ritsuryō regional chiefs (zaichi
shuchō)—on the other hand.
It also seems useful to make a principal analytical difference between the ruling class profiting
from the labor of working people, and the state bureaucracy, which had to mediate between
diverging social segments belonging to the ruling stratum; this very special role is one of the
important subjects of studies of ritsuryō society.^2
The great category of “the ruled” was also subdivided into several statuses. Most of this popu-
lation were peasants, who produced various goods for tax and performed statute labor on the
side. In addition, groups of craftsmen and manufacturers were active in the capital and in the
regional political centers.
Important steps for establishing a centralized political system were taken during the late
seventh and early eighth centuries. The adoption and adaptation of political theories and law
(ritsuryō) and other knowledge transfer from the Chinese subcontinent developed into a strong
instrument of power aimed, most fundamentally, at making the resources of the whole imperium
(tenka) accessible to the rapidly developing center.
In times of socio- political revolution, no society begins with a blank slate. We need to gain a
realistic view of ways and methods chosen by the actors to cope with the challenges of building
a type of state they had never experienced. In the following pages I discuss the crucial economic
aspects of this process.
The soil and its tillers being the main sources of wealth in an agrarian society, the chief target of
the central elites was to find methods for controlling the land and the people working on it.^3 A
territorial administration was established in order to incorporate the regional and local elites.
This administration was framed by a hierarchical system combining offices and ranks, equally
subsuming central and regional elites, and leaving scant room for social mobility. Ranks and
offices were vested with particular rights to income and other perquisites that were specified and
controlled by special divisions of the central administration. At the apex of this hierarchy was a
king or queen for whom the title tennō (most commonly rendered in English as “emperor”) came
into use from the late seventh century.
This hierarchy was built upon a foundation of subordinate officers nearly excluded from the
higher system of ranks and offices. Soon after founding Heijō-kyō (Nara) in 712 as a residential
city for the monarch and his or her court, the number of inhabitants increased to around 100,000,
comprised mostly of craftsmen and servicemen of all kinds, along with their families.
Becoming integrated into the system of ranks and offices simultaneously meant divesting all
members of the elite of their traditional personal rights over lands and people. The king became
the supreme lord over all people and land, including arable fields (especially rice paddies), rivers,
and the sea. Common use of wastelands for woodcutting, fishing, or for hunting and gathering
was guaranteed by law.
The state bureaucracy built up in this process had to guarantee the interests of the ruling elites
as a whole. An important element of its policies was to ensure the survival of the labor forces on
which the elites depended. In order to establish and maintain control over people and land, the
bureaucracy recorded the entire population in household registers, to establish a general status of
royal subjects that excluded only the small number of slaves.^4 A system for allocation of farmland
(mainly paddy fields) was introduced, and the imperium was divided into provinces. With the
promulgation of the Taihō ritsuryō in 702, the provinces came under administrative oversight by