Meiji Land Tax Reform

The Meiji land tax reform of 1873, known in Japanese as chisokaisei, was a major restructuring of Japan' s agricultural taxation system undertaken by the new Meiji government, establishing private land ownership in Japan for the first time and replacing a system under which taxes had been paid in rice and other crops assessed against each plot' s yield with a fixed monetary tax based on assessed land value. Farmers were initially made responsible for measuring their own land and calculating their tax, a system that proved unreliable and prompted the government to create a dedicated land tax reform department in 1875 to enforce more rigorous assessment; the new system boosted government tax revenue and farm productivity by allowing land to be freely bought and sold, but it also provoked a series of farmer uprisings against the new burden, including the Ise Revolt and the Makabe Revolt.