Reading the Shōzeichō Through the Logic of Human Interests
Our Premise
Our starting point is the following question:
What did the people who read the shōzeichō think, what did they question, what did they order, what did they verify, and what did they ultimately regard as “processed”?
From this premise, I would like to pose another question:
Who assigned which position to whom?
If we regard provincial and district officials simply as “administrators,” we see little more than a chain of command:
Central Government → Provincial Officials (kokushi) → District Officials (gunji) → Local Communities
But if we reverse the direction of analysis and examine these positions from the perspective of human interests, an entirely different list of questions emerges:
- Which positions were financially advantageous?
- Which positions carried significant authority?
- Which positions provided access to goods and resources?
- Which positions enabled officials to mobilize people?
- Which positions allowed figures to create, alter, or manipulate figures in the accounts?
- Which positions enabled officials to verify or challenge those figures?
- Who obtained those positions?
- Who had the power to appoint people to them?
At this point, however, an important qualification is necessary.
We are not proposing a simplistic theory that “ancient officials, being human, must have been selfish.” Nor are we attempting to label ancient bureaucrats as corrupt.
Rather, we are trying to construct an analytical perspective in which the shōzeichō itself is read as a trace left by human interests as they operated within an institutional system.
Once we reach this point, our understanding of the shōzeichō begins to move in an entirely different direction.
If we apply the concept of the “logic of the field”, for example, we might begin with a discrepancy:
“The figures in the account do not add up.”
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“Why?”
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“Is this merely a clerical error?”
But another possibility immediately presents itself:
“Was this a figure that happened to benefit someone?”
In other words:
Which positions enabled people to create, aggregate, verify, or correct financial figures?
At this point, we should temporarily suspend the conventional image of the ancient official as a peaceful, benevolent, and impartial administrator and introduce the vested interests of ancient officials as an analytical keyword.
If we do so, the question changes.
Instead of asking:
“What did the provincial governor do?”
we begin asking:
“Why was this particular person placed in this particular position in this particular place?”
That is a fundamentally different question.
The Circulation of Interests
If we suddenly return to the modern world, the analogy may seem somewhat abrupt. Yet even in contemporary politics, we can observe a familiar cycle:
- Those who control resources attract people.
- Those who control positions command people.
- Those with networks gain access to subsequent positions.
- Positions generate further access to resources and networks.
There is no reason to assume that the institutional world of the ancient Ritsuryō state was entirely free from comparable dynamics.
The shōzeichō may therefore be read as a trace of such a cycle.
To put the hypothesis more boldly:
Appointment → Posting → Authority → Access to Resources → Human Networks → Further Appointment
may have constituted a recurrent cycle within Ritsuryō society.
This does not mean that we should identify the Ritsuryō state as a “corrupt bureaucracy.”
Rather, the point is that we should temporarily suspend the conventional image of ancient officials as universally benevolent and selfless administrators and ask whether the distribution of official positions also functioned as a distribution of interests.
This leads to a more provocative proposition:
The allocation of official positions may have been not only a personnel policy of the Ritsuryō state but also a policy for distributing access to interests and resources.
An official position was not simply an “administrative function.”
It was also a form of access to resources.
We are not, therefore, trying to establish that “ancient officials were corrupt.”
What we want to investigate is:
Where did institutional responsibilities overlap with individual or collective interests?
For example:
- What did the grain from gunzō and other district revenues mean to a district official?
- What did the management of regular-tax grain and suiko grain mean to a provincial official?
- What did the verification of receipts and withdrawals mean to officials responsible for storehouses?
- What did the transport and forwarding of goods mean to officials responsible for logistics?
- What did discrepancies in figures mean to officials responsible for auditing them?
From this perspective, interest does not simply mean selfishness.
Rather:
Interest means the benefits, authority, responsibilities, and risks attached to a particular official position.
This may provide a way to move beyond static studies of the shōzeichō and toward a deeper understanding of the Ritsuryō state.
We have already proposed the working hypothesis that:
the shōzeichō preserves traces of this circulation of interests.
This does not mean that the shōzeichō directly records the circulation of interests itself.
Rather:
A register originally produced for fiscal administration may nevertheless preserve, through the processes of its compilation, verification, submission, and correction, traces of the interests of officials and the distribution of authority among them.
In this sense, one might say that:
the account book appears to erase human beings, but it never succeeds in erasing them completely.
Behind its various figures, we may still find traces of:
- Who counted?
- Who verified?
- Who approved?
- Who bore responsibility?
- Who benefited from a particular figure?
This is why we should look for human beings behind the numbers.
And Then There Are the Gunji
When we apply this perspective to our analysis of the Gun'in-chō and other fiscal records of Echizen Province, an even more intriguing possibility emerges.
Instead of treating Tanjō, Asuwa, Tsuruga, and Enuma simply as administrative districts, we can ask:
What did each district control?
This introduces a new analytical perspective.
Asuwa: management of suiko and its returns.
Tsuruga: transportation and logistics.
Tanjō: collection, concentration, and redistribution of resources.
Enuma: a combination of frontier functions, resources, and external contacts.
If such differences can actually be demonstrated through the evidence, then:
not all districts necessarily had the same value to a district official.
Simply knowing that someone became a gunji is therefore not enough.
We must ask:
Which district did he become gunji of?
This represents a reversal in the study of ancient officialdom: a shift from studying official titles to studying the economic and administrative value of individual posts.
That is why our question ultimately becomes:
Who allocated the position, when was it allocated, in what form, and what followed from that appointment?
It is no longer sufficient merely to compile lists of the names of appointed officials.
We need to follow the entire sequence:
① Type of position
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② Goods, people, information, and authority controlled by the position
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③ Who recommended or appointed the holder?
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④ What did the official actually do during the tenure?
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⑤ In which registers or documents do traces of those activities survive?
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⑥ Where did the official go after leaving the position?
If we can pursue this sequence, the shōzeichō ceases to be merely a “fiscal settlement.”
It begins to resemble:
an administrative database that inadvertently preserves traces of human relationships.
And once we reach that level of analysis, we can formulate an even more provocative proposition:
To read the shōzeichō is not simply to read numbers.
It is to look for the people who produced those numbers.
Who collected the goods?
Who transported them?
Who calculated them?
Who verified them?
Who approved them?
And for whom did it matter that those figures were regarded as “correct”?
Only when we ask these questions do human beings begin to emerge on the other side of the shōzeichō.
What we encounter there is not the abstract entity called the “Ritsuryō state.”
We encounter human beings who needed resources, sought authority, desired positions, built alliances, chose patrons, cultivated protégés, and sometimes took advantage of gaps in the institutional system.
This leads to the next question:
Who, exactly, distributed those positions?
When were they given, to whom, and with what expectations?
And how did money, resources, and authority actually circulate through the ancient state as a result of those personnel decisions?
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At this point, we need to reconsider the history of the Ritsuryō state not merely as institutional history, but as a history of human beings competing for, exercising, and distributing positions.
What Was Happening When the Shōzeichō of Owari Reached the Center?
This perspective also gives rise to another question:
What began to happen inside the minds of central officials the moment the shōzeichō of Owari Province arrived at the central government?
It is true that the conventional explanation is correct:
Provincial officials compiled the shōzeichō
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It was submitted to the central government
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The Ministry of Popular Affairs (Minbushō) and the Bureau of Taxation (Shuzeiryō) examined it
There is no reason to dispute this institutional sequence.
Indeed, the system appears to have involved the examination of the shōzeichō by the Shuzeiryō, with supplementary accounts being prepared when problems were identified and the shōzeichō returned for correction.
But what happens if we open this black box called kankai—the formal examination and verification of accounts?
I would tentatively reconstruct the process as a series of stages.
1. Stage One: “Can This Account Be Trusted?”
The first thing the central officials would have examined was probably not the individual figures.
It was whether the account itself met the conditions necessary to function as an administrative document.
The shōzeichō of Owari Province for Tenpyō 6 (734) survives, beginning with the province-wide balance and followed by balances for individual districts.
From the perspective of central officials, the first questions would therefore have been:
Are all the necessary categories present?
Do the figures for the province as a whole correspond to the figures for the individual districts?
Do the carry-over from the previous year, receipts during the current year, expenditures, and remaining balances form a continuous sequence?
Can the figures be checked against attached documents and related registers?
In modern terms, this is not yet the question:
“Is this expenditure reasonable?”
It is the more basic question:
“Does this document qualify as a coherent financial account?”
That would naturally be the first stage of examination.
2. Stage Two: “Do the Numbers Add Up?”
Now comes the calculation.
For the central officials, the basic relationship would have been something like:
**Receipts
- Previous-year balance
- Returns from suiko
− Expenditures
= Current balance**
They would also need to determine whether the figures for the province as a whole corresponded to the figures reported by the individual districts.
In other words, they had to establish whether:
“The figures reported by Owari Province”
matched
“the figures that Owari Province should actually have had.”
This is indispensable to any system of fiscal accountability.
The very name shōzeichō deserves reconsideration here.
Rather than saying that it was called shōzeichō simply because it was a “correct tax account,” we might say that its significance lay in whether the central authorities could determine the figures to be correct and verifiable.
3. Stage Three: “Why Did the Numbers Turn Out This Way?”
An account does not necessarily end with the discovery that the arithmetic is correct.
Suppose, for example:
“The return from suiko is unusually low this year.”
The central official might then ask:
“The calculation is correct—but why is the amount so low?”
The reverse could also occur.
Suppose:
“This particular district has an exceptionally high return.”
Then the question becomes:
“Why?”
This is the logic of investigating anomalies.
What the central government wanted may therefore not have been merely “correct numbers,” but:
an explanation of the administrative activities and circumstances behind the numbers.
From this perspective:
Anomalous figures may have been precisely the information that central officials needed to investigate next.
4. Stage Four: “Is This Provincial Official Doing His Job?”
At this point, the shōzeichō begins to transform into something resembling a personnel document.
The financial condition of Owari Province could reveal:
- whether receipts were adequate;
- whether suiko was being administered appropriately;
- whether there were shortages;
- whether expenditures were excessive;
- whether disasters or damaged fields provided legitimate explanations;
- whether provincial officials were properly carrying out inspections and tours within the province.
Here we encounter the surviving evidence for provincial officials conducting tours within their jurisdictions during the Tenpyō period.
Through expenditures associated with such journeys, it may have been possible to observe administrative activities such as inspecting harvest conditions and investigating agricultural damage.
The shōzeichō therefore begins to move from:
financial report
toward:
report on administrative activity.
And beyond that lies the question:
“Is this provincial official competent?”
5. Shōzeichō → Evaluation of Provincial Officials → Personnel Decisions
Here I would like to take the argument one step further.
When central officials examined the shōzeichō of Owari, they may not have evaluated merely:
“the fiscal condition of Owari Province.”
They may also have used the information to consider:
“Who should continue to govern Owari Province?”
In other words:
Shōzeichō → Evaluation of provincial officials → Personnel decisions
This point must be stated cautiously.
To repeat: we have not yet found direct evidence demonstrating that the Tenpyō 6 shōzeichō of Owari was itself a personnel evaluation sheet for the provincial officials.
We should therefore not present this as an established historical fact.
Instead, it should be treated as a working hypothesis:
the possibility that information contained in the shōzeichō was used in evaluating provincial officials.
That possibility deserves systematic investigation.
6. What Did “Evaluation” Mean?
Here I doubt that the evaluation was simply a matter of deciding whether an official was “good” or “bad.”
The central government's classification of provinces by size—for example, as large, upper, middle, or small—was presumably relevant to determining the number and organization of provincial officials required in each province.
But this was not necessarily the same thing as evaluating the performance of individual officials.
What may have mattered administratively was something closer to a classification of risk:
A. Stable provinces
Receipts, suiko returns, expenditures, and balances were all within expected ranges.
B. Provinces requiring attention
The figures were arithmetically consistent, but returns, expenditures, or other indicators were unusual.
C. Problematic provinces
There were shortages, unpaid obligations, or inconsistencies.
D. Provinces requiring investigation
The figures could not be adequately explained by the information supplied.
This would have constituted an administrative risk classification.
Central officials could not possibly have examined every province with equal intensity every year.
They lacked the manpower, time, and perhaps even the administrative need to do so.
A more rational approach would have been:
Pass the cases that present no problems.
Examine carefully those in which anomalies appear.
This is precisely the kind of administrative rationality that we should look for in the shōzeichō.
7. And Then Comes the Most Interesting Question: What Happened Next?
The next question is:
How did the central government make use of its evaluation?
This can be divided into four possible responses.
① Return the account
No significant problem:
“Processed.”
② Send an inquiry
The figures are questionable:
“Explain this.”
③ Require compensation or correction
There is a shortage, unpaid obligation, or loss:
“Who is responsible for making good the deficit?”
At this point, the question of responsibility emerges.
④ Use the information for personnel decisions
“Should this person be retained?”
“Should he be transferred to another province?”
“Should he be recalled to the center?”
“Can this person be entrusted with a more important position?”
This fourth possibility is the most provocative—and perhaps the most difficult to demonstrate.
But precisely because it is difficult, it deserves investigation rather than immediate dismissal.
8. Redefining the Shōzeichō
Traditionally, the shōzeichō has been described without much controversy as:
a financial account of provincial revenue and expenditure.
But if we regard it instead as:
an information system through which the central government evaluated the fiscal condition of provincial governments,
then we can go one step further.
The shōzeichō may be understood as:
an administrative information system through which the central government transformed locally generated information about money, goods, labor, and administrative activities into judgments such as “normal / abnormal,” “acceptable / unacceptable,” and “trustworthy / untrustworthy.”
If this interpretation can be demonstrated, the bureaucratic organization of the ancient state can be illuminated from an entirely new angle.
The shōzeichō would no longer be merely a fiscal document.
It would be a window into how information was converted into administrative judgment.
9. A Re-reading of the Shōzeichō of Owari
Let us now attempt to reread the shōzeichō of Owari not by asking simply:
“What does it say?”
but rather:
“In what order was it designed to be read by a central official?”
For the purposes of this paper, I would tentatively propose the following sequence:
① Verification of formal completeness
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② Verification of overall totals
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③ Reconciliation between province and districts
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④ Comparison between previous and current years
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⑤ Detection of anomalies
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⑥ Investigation of the reasons for anomalies
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⑦ Evaluation of the administrative performance of provincial and district officials
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⑧ Correction, compensation, return, or other administrative action
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⑨ Possible use in subsequent administrative and personnel decisions
If this reconstruction proves viable, the shōzeichō can no longer be regarded simply as a “financial report.”
It becomes:
a source from which we may reverse-engineer the decision-making flow of central officials.
This immediately leads to another question:
Who actually read the document first?
Did the Daijōkan really examine it first?
Or should we instead imagine an information-processing hierarchy such as:
Province → Shōzeichi / submitting officials → Minbushō → Shuzeiryō → formal examination → Daijōkan, when necessary?
The significance of this possibility is that different offices may have read the same information for different purposes.
Perhaps:
The Shuzeiryō looked at the numbers.
The Minbushō looked at the fiscal condition of the province.
The Daijōkan transformed the results into broader political, administrative, and personnel decisions.
If this division of functions can be demonstrated from the historical evidence, we could develop an entirely new line of research:
How did information contained in the shōzeichō move through the decision-making system of the ancient state?
The next task would therefore be to take each individual item in the shōzeichō of Owari and simulate, one by one:
“If I were a central official, what would I look at first?”
That task, however, I will leave for another occasion.
