元初江南における徴税體制について

Abstract

This article deals with the authoritarian taxation policy with respect to Southern China carried out mainly during the period of the Uighur minister Sengge's regency (1287-91). Sengge was attempting to collect taxes in money and grain which had never been collected since the occupation of the south. For this purpose, for each province (xing-sheng 行省) an investigative accounting called li-suan 理算 was instituted, and a zeng-li si 徴理司 created to supervise it. Owing to the harsh accounting investigation performed by tax contractors serving as auditing officials (li-suanguan guan 理算官), considerable unrest broke out and the political situation was unstable. The newly established Travelling Court of Agriculture (行大司農司) and the Agriculture-Encouraging State Colony Authority (觀農營田司) and other offices for the encouragement of agriculture supervised the Yuan's first cadastral survey (called kua-kan 括勘) and played important parts in tax policy. At the time of this survey the government was favorably disposed towards the amassing of holdings by big land lords, and, aiming at guaranteeing the quota of tax grain, determined the amounts of tax to be collected by the lu 路 and Xing 府, which were the lowest-level agencies involved. These agencies were supposed to collect more taxes than were actually due, in order to produce a surplus. The significance of this kua-kan method is that it established a system whereby responsibility for taxation was shifted from provincial units to local authorities, and thence to rural functionaries such as li-zheng 里正, zhu-shou 主席, and she-zhang 社長. State land, which was the fundamental component of the grain tax system, especiall the Public Fields (gong-tian 官田) created by Jia Si-dao 賈似道 in late Southern Song, continued through Yuan via the operations of Kua-kan, and in consequence the peasants of Jiangnan were not liberated from their onerous taxes.