United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Temmu himself had created the precedent for this. When stricken by mortal illness, he had proclaimed remission of all obligations, "whether in rice or in valuables," incurred on or before the last day of the preceding year. But Jito's edict had a special feature. It provided that anyone already in servitude on account of a debt should be relieved from serving any longer on account of the interest.
Eight of these new titles were instituted by Temmu, namely, mahito, asomi, sukune, imiki, michi-no-shi, omi, muraji, and inagi, and their nearest English equivalents are, perhaps, duke, marquis, count, lord, viscount, baron, and baronet. It is unnecessary to give any etymological analysis of these terms; their order alone is important. But two points have to be noted.
Whatever hopes these conservatives entertained of a reversion to the old-time-order of things, they were signally disappointed. The Daika reformers had invariably contrived that conciliation should march hand in hand with innovation. Temmu relied on coercion. He himself administered State affairs with little recourse to ministerial aid but always with military assistance in the background.
Even Tenchi, who profoundly admired the Confucian philosophy and whose experience of the Soga nobles' treason might well have prejudiced him against the faith they championed; and even Temmu, whose ideals took the forms of frugality and militarism, were lavish in their offerings at Buddhist ceremonials.
Tenchi did not wish that his reforms should be directly associated with the Throne until their success was assured; Temmu desired that the additions made by him to the Daika system should be consolidated by the genius of his wife before the sceptre passed finally into the hands of his son.
Temmu saw that if the work of compilation was abandoned solely to princely and official littérateurs, they would probably sacrifice on the altar of the ideograph much that was venerable and worthy to be preserved.
A shortlived compilation it proved, for in the year 645, the Soga chiefs, custodians of the documents, threw them into the fire on the eve of their own execution for treason. Thirty-seven years later the Emperor Temmu took the matter in hand. One of his reasons for doing so has been historically transmitted.
Yet it had taken on the vague outline of its destined form as early as the reign of the Emperor Temmu, whose accession is generally dated 673 A.D. During that reign Buddhism appears to have become a powerful influence at court; for the Emperor practically imposed a vegetarian diet upon the people proof positive of supreme power in fact as well as in theory.
The former had been nominated by his father, Temmu, but was instructed to leave the reins of power in the hands of his mother, Jito, for a time. He died in the year 689, while Jito was still regent, and Takaichi, another of Temmu's sons, who had distinguished himself as commander of a division of troops in the Jinshin campaign, was made Prince Imperial.
The Daika reforms had aimed at converting everyone in the empire into a veritable unit of the nation, not a mere member of an uji or a tomobe. To these their old status had to be left. The Emperor Temmu died in 686, and the throne remained nominally unoccupied until 690.
Word Of The Day