Other evil practices are incidentally referred to in the context of the Daika reforms. Thus it appears that slaves occasionally left their lawful owners owing to the latter's poverty and entered the service of rich men, who thereafter refused to give them up; that when a divorced wife or concubine married into another family, her former husband, after the lapse of years, often preferred claims against her new husband's property; that men, relying on their power, demanded people's daughters in marriage, and in the event of the girl entering another house, levied heavy toll on both families; that when a widow, of ten or twenty years' standing, married again, or when a girl entered into wedlock, the people of the vicinity insisted on the newly wedded couple performing the Shinto rite of harai (purgation), which was perverted into a device for compelling offerings of goods and wine; that the compulsory performance of this ceremony had become so onerous as to make poor men shrink from giving burial to even their own brothers who had died at a distance from home, or hesitate to extend aid to them in mortal peril, and that when a forced labourer cooked his food by the roadside or borrowed a pot to boil his rice, he was often obliged to perform expensive purgation. OFFICIAL ORGANIZATION At the head of all officials were the sa-daijin (minister of the Left), the u-daijin (minister of the Right) and the nai-daijin (minister of the Interior), and after them came the heads of departments, of which eight were established, after the model of the Tang Court in China. They were the Central Department (Nakatsukasa-sho); the Department of Ceremonies (Shikibu-sho); the Department of Civil Government (Jibu-sho); the Department of Civil Affairs (Mimbu-sho); the Department of War (Hyobu-sho); the Department of Justice (Gyobu-sho); the Treasury (Okura-sho), and the Household Department (Kunai-sho). These departments comprised a number of bureaux. All officials of high rank had to assemble at the south gate of the palace in time to enter at sunrise, and they remained there until some time between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M.