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Yet things should have been otherwise, for in Takauji's time there was enacted and promulgated the code of regulations already referred to as the Kemmu Shikimoku, wherein were strictly forbidden basara, debauchery, gambling, reunions for tea drinking and couplet composing, lotteries, and other excesses.
This same doctrine permeated by construction the commentaries that accompanied the articles of the Kemmu Shikimoku as quoted above, and in that fact Chikafusa saw an opportunity of winning adherents for the Southern Court by proclaiming its heaven-conferred rights. "Great Yamato," Kitabatake wrote, "is a divine country. It is only our land whose foundations were first laid by the divine ancestor.
Thus, whereas the Southern Court used the year-name Engen for 1336-1339, the North kept the year-name Kemmu for two years, and as there were different nengo names for half a century, a new element of confusion was added to the already perplexing chronology of Japan. In administrative methods there was a difference.
He endeavoured also to enforce strict obedience to the economical precepts of the Kemmu code, and altogether the ethics he favoured were out of harmony with the social conditions of Kyoto at the time and with the natural proclivities of the young shogun himself. In fine, he had to leave the capital, too full of his enemies, and to retire to his native province, Awa.
To these priests and literati was entrusted the task of compiling a code based on the Joei Shikimoku of the Hojo regents, and there resulted the Kemmu Shikimoku, promulgated in 1337.* This was not a law, properly so called, but rather a body of precepts contained in seventeen articles. They have much interest as embodying the ethics of the time in political circles.
Then follow two articles dealing with the ownership of vacant plots and rebuilding of houses and fireproof godowns in the devastated sections of the capital. *Kemmu was the Northern Court's name of the year-period 1334 to 1338: see p. 398. The Kemmu Shikimoku by Mr. Consul-General Hall, in the "Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan;" epitomized by Murdoch.
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