tokusei

Updated: June 23, 2025

Very early he became familiar with scenes of violence, for, goaded to madness by the taxes exacted at the seven toll-gates, a mob of the metropolitan citizens rose in arms, beat off the troops sent to quell them and threatened to sack the city, when, they were appeased by the issue of a tokusei ordinance, which, as already explained, meant the remission of all debts and the cancellation of all financial obligations.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

But during the financial straits to which the country was reduced after the Mongol invasion, the Hojo deemed it necessary to afford relief to landowners who had mortgaged their property, and thus, in 1297, a law tokusei-rei was enacted, providing that eviction for debt must not be enforced. Under the Ashikaga, the tokusei received a still wider import.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

It was interpreted as including all debts and pecuniary obligations of any kind. In other words, the promulgation of a tokusei ordinance meant that all debtors, then and there, obtained complete relief. The law was not construed exactly alike everywhere.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Socialism in such a genial form appealed not only to the masses but also to bushi who had pledged their property as security for loans to meet warlike outlays or the demands of luxurious extravagance. Alike in the home provinces and in distant Kaga, Noto, Etchu, and the south, tokusei riots took place.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The poorer classes of samurai being increasingly distressed, they, too, borrowed money at high rates of interest from merchants and wealthy farmers, which loans they were generally unable to repay. Ultimately, the Bakufu solved the situation partially by decreeing that no lawsuit for the recovery of borrowed money should be entertained a reversion to the tokusei system of the Ashikaga shoguns.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Originally imported from China, the tokusei meant nothing more than a temporary remission of taxes in times of distress.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Forced by riotous mobs, or constrained by his own needs, the Muromachi shogun issued tokusei edicts again and again, incurring the hot indignation of the creditor class and disturbing the whole economic basis of society. Yoshimasa was conspicuously reckless; he put the tokusei system into force thirteen times.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The building of splendid residences, the laying out of spacious parks, the gratification of luxurious tastes, and the procuring of funds to defray the cost of his vast extravagance these things occupied his entire attention. Associated with the Ashikaga shogunate is a financial device known in history as tokusei, a term signifying "virtuous administration."

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The Bakufu made several futile legislative essays to amend this state of affairs, and finally, in the year 1297, they resorted to a ruinous device called tokusei, or the "benevolent policy." This consisted in enacting a law which vetoed all suits for the recovery of interest, cancelled all mortgages, and interdicted the pledging of military men's property.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era