著者
高橋 亮介
出版者
公益財団法人史学会
雑誌
史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.115, no.2, pp.169-193, 2006-02-20

Egypt saw a great expansion in the popularity of the local custom of brother-sister marriage during the first two centuries of the AD era, especially among metropolites, a privileged class in the Roman province. Why did this custom unfamiliar to the Romans flourish under Roman rule? How did the practice of sibling marriage function in Romano-Egyptian society? These are the questions this article addresses. Previous scholarship has attributed the reason for such popularity to the introduction of a rigid status system, under which provincial elites needed to prove their ancestry in order to acquire privileged status. Sibling marriage allegedly made the proof easier. However, another perspective is worth considering; that is, the economic function of brother-sister marriage. While scholars have admitted that sibling marriage contributed towards preventing the fragmentation of family property, this function has not been sufficiently explored in the historical context of the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman society. The question to be asked is how the significance of family property changed. Changes in the local administrative system and their effect on the economic situation of the provincials, especially their land holding system, stand out as particularly suggestive. Rome's rule over her empire depended not on a highly centralised bureaucracy down to the lowest level of local administration (like that of Ptolemaic Egypt), but on indirect control through cities, and especially their wealthy elites. When Egypt was made a Roman province, therefore, the Romans set out to create there a wealthy elite class by legitimating and expanding the private ownership of land. While these landowners had fiscal privileges and relatively large properties, they were expected to expend their wealth on local administration. They needed to be keenly concerned about the management of their property, in order to leave their offspring enough to perform the public services which accompanied their status. In terms of the motivation for brother-sister marriage, what needs most emphasis is women's acquisition of land as the result of its privatisation. Although some provincial families tried to limit women's acquisition of land through inheritance or dowry, it seems that, nevertheless, landholding by women considerably increased. Brother-sister marriage was an effective method to prevent fragmentation of family property in this situation of a significant increase of property coming into the possession of women. The Roman policy of governing the province indirectly was therefore responsible for the expansion of the local custom of brother-sister marriage. This article shows the complexity of the impact of Roman rule on a society and how the history of a local, non-Roman, custom also became part of the process of "Romanisation."
著者
中西 啓太
出版者
公益財団法人史学会
雑誌
史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.120, no.4, pp.496-519, 2011-04-20

Due to continuing tax increases during the Russo-Japanese War, postwar regional society became faced with the serious problem of increased tax burdens. This article takes up strata of powerful local figures at the time, which have been dealt with in almost all of the research to date in the context of regional improvement movement and the expansion of political parties, shedding new light on their relationship to the local taxation system. The author offers Saitama Prefectures as a typical example of where large increases occurred in the income tax and points to a little known tax institution, the Income Investigation Commission (IIC; Shotoku Chosa Iinkai 所得調査委員会), which was involved in calculating individual income tax amounts and whose members were chosen by taxpayers in local elections. The article begins with a quantitative study to determine the place of income taxes within the context of regional society, showing how both tax revenue and the number of taxpayers increased during the War and how after the War social strata with vested interests in the question of taxation greatly expanded. As to the process of choosing members of the IIC, elections were held mainly county by county (gun 郡), while candidates and the distribution of posts were controlled by local leaders under non-competitive conditions. Elected members tended to be holders of important local offices, such as village headman, and were involved in local improvement projects in collaboration with national policy. However, in 1909, members of the IIC clashed with the Department of Tax Affairs, demanding a decrease in the income tax burdens of local residents. Saitama IIC members filed complaints with higher authorities and were supported by village headmen. Despite the refusal to meet their demands, the following year they lobbied the National Diet and both political parties to pass legislation, in a non-partisan spirit that also marked the movement to lower land taxes. The author concludes that the power elite in post-Russo-Japanese War regional society came to possess a dual character: one complacently conducting projects along the policy lines of central bureaucratic agencies; the other in conflict with how the national tax revenue authority was dealing with regional society.
著者
宮坂 宥勝
出版者
公益財団法人史学会
雑誌
史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.88, no.3, pp.352-361, 1979-03-20
著者
斎藤 夏来
出版者
公益財団法人史学会
雑誌
史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.113, no.6, pp.1066-1097, 2004-06-20

It is a well-known fa,ct that the five major Zen temples (Gozan 五山) in medieval Japan, whose abbots were appointed by the Ashikaga during its reign, played an important role in supporting the Bakufu's fiscal budget. In concrete terms, the discussion has turned to the fact that the order appointing Zen temple abbots (kojo 公帖) was widely sold for cash in the form of an official position know as za-kumon 坐公文, which was not directly related to the religious appointment of abbots. However, the issuance of kojo is an issue at the very core of the policy towards Zen temples, so the question arises as to whether or not appointments to za-kumon should be looked upon merely in economic terms as a form of selling kojo. This is the focus of the present article, which attempts to consider the political and religious ramifications of the practice. As a result, the author concludes that rather than constituting a source of revenue for the za-kumon appointments were related more to the expenditures side of the its fiscal ledger. Out of its belief in Zen Buddhism, the Ashikaga regime absorbed and systematized za-kumon payments and used the revenue in its sponsorship (like other members of medieval ruling elite) of such religious projects as the building and repair of temple complexes, sutra copying, and the dispatch of trading ships (the profits from which were used to build and repair temples). However, even more important than such religious sponsorship was the, decision-making process involved in za-kumon appointments. The purpose of such appointments-i.e., the implementation of Buddhist ceremonies and projects-became an important aspect promoting consensus among a ruling class that was on the verge of breaking apart in the midst of civil war. This political aspect of za-kumon certainly can not be understood merely within the framework of the "buying and selling of offices" to accumulate fiscal revenue with no consideration of the "religious grace" emanating from such an act. It was only during the following Sengoku period that revenue from the purchase of za-kumon appointments would go to the treasury or be redistributed as stipends to secular aristocrats within the regime. That is to say, the emphasis on the fiscal aspects of za-humon with no consideration for financing religious activities represents a marked deviation from the essential meaning of the practice.
著者
渡辺 晃宏
出版者
公益財団法人史学会
雑誌
史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.98, no.12, pp.1891-1937, 2050-2049, 1989-12-20

Movements of fudokoku 不動穀 (rice reserves) are one good indicator of the economy under the ritsuryo state. According to the conventional view, the Tenpyo 天平 era (729-749) has been considered the high of point of the Japanese ancient state based in part on the understanding that fudokoku stores accumulated to an amount equal to the 田租 (the rice tax on publically allocated land) for 30 years to come, or the total rice crop for one year. What has not yet been considered, however, is what led to the decline in the institution. In the present paper, the author first deals with whether the fudokoku stores were indeed really at their peak quantities during the Tenpyo era, and then attempts to show that because fudokoku expenditures were increasing throughout the 9th century, these reserves probably reached a maximum around the end of 8th century. In addition to increasing expenditures during the 9th century, such appropriations as nenryo soshomai 年料租春米 and nenryo betsuno sokoku 年料別納租穀 began to be deducted from the 田租 before it entered the storehouse, resulting in a decline in reserves from both the revenue and expenditure sides of the ledger, to the extent that we notice the fudokoku system in danger of bankruptcy during the Kanpyo 寛平 era (889-898). With a decline of even the storehouses holding fudokoku, the whole system had to be revamped. The present paper begins with the story beginning in the 10th century and the proceeds backwards to trace what happened to fudokoku, in an attempt to clarify one aspect of the process of change within the Japanese ancient state as a whole. A document entitled Etchu-no-Kuni Kanso Nokoku Kotai-ki 越中国官倉納穀交替記, an accounting record of the official storehouse of Etchu province, is a very valuable source material for ascertaining the accumulation of fudokoku over the 160 years from the beginning of the Tenpyo to the end of Kanpyo era. An analysis of this document shows not only exactly how fudokoku was accumulated, but also that the quantity steadily increased, with the exception of two eras of stagnant rice production (Tenpyo and Enryaku 延暦 [782-806]), up until the end of 9th century. However, a period of increased expenditures including huge outlays for building the Heian capital and pacifying the borderpeoples in the north was ushered in. Through a process of fixing the amounts of special appropriations (betsuno 別納) from the rice tax and designating the remainder as fudoso, finally in 964 a new system was instituted. With this new way of appropriating the rice revenues coming in from the provinces, fudokoku was maintained in name only, but it was soon abandoned altogether when during the third decade of 11th century a system of uniform levies on the provinces was established. However, the memory of the time when fudokoku was appropriated according to the whims of the central government lived on until the end of the 14th century in the ceremonial submittal by a newly appointed provincial governor of a formal petition, entitled fudoso kaiken shinsei-ge 不動倉開検申請解, requesting that the fudokoku storehouse be opened for expection.