Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 199

Considerable progress seems to have been made in tradal matters. Markets were opened at several places in the interior, and coastwise commerce developed so much that, in A.D. 553, it was found expedient to appoint an official for the purpose of numbering and registering the vessels thus employed. The Chinese settler, Wang Sin-i, who has already been spoken of as the only person able to decipher a Korean memorial, was given the office of fune no osa (chief of the shipping bureau) and granted the title of fune no fubito (registrar of vessels). Subsequently, during the reign of Jomei (629–641), an akinai-osa (chief of trade) was appointed in the person of Munemaro, whose father, Kuhi, had brought scales and weights from China during the reign of Sushun (558–592), and this system was formally adopted in the days of Jomei (629–641). There had not apparently been any officially recognized weights and measures in remote antiquity. The width of the hand (ta or tsuka) and the spread of the arms (hiro) were the only dimensions employed. By and by the Korean shaku (foot), which corresponds to 1.17 shaku of the present day, came into use. In Kenso's time (485–487) there is mention of a measure of rice being sold for a piece of silver, and the Emperor Kimmei (540–571) is recorded to have given 1000 koku of seed-barley to the King of Kudara. But it is supposed that the writer of the Chronicles, in making these entries, projected the terminology of his own time into the previous centuries. There were neither coins nor koku in those eras.