The Japanese ritsuryo system, the governmental structure defined by ritsu, the criminal code, and ryo, the administrative and civil codes, is an imitation of the lü-ling log in force in T'ang China and incorporates many of its original articles.

Where different local conditions call for amendment, however, they are made without hesitation; it is a good early example of the skill of the Japanese in adapting foreign culture.

The features had first been delineated in rough form in the Taika edicts, but then had been refined—perhaps first by Tenji in the Omi Code and then by Temmu—and certainly given final form in the Taiho Code of 701 and its successor, the Yoro Code of 718.

Under the ritsuryo system, the Japanese emperor, for example, is in some respects an absolute monarch who rules over the whole country as the head of a bureaucracy in the same manner as the emperor of China.

Yet at the same time, he is also the traditional high priest who maintains peace for the land and people by paying tribute to the deities and sounding out their will.

The people are divided into two main classes, freemen and slaves.

The slaves are the possession of the government, the aristocracy, and the shrines and temples; as such, they are obliged to provide unlimited labor, but their total number accounts for less than one-tenth of the population.

The majority of the free population are farmers.

All land is, in principle, the property of the state.

Most of the land is distributed equally among the people, but, apart from this, land of a certain annual yield is given to bureaucrats and other high-ranking persons as stipends and to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples as sources of revenue.