The result of all this beneficent administration was such a marked increase of the production of rice that the people called Yoshimune the _kome_ (rice) shōgun. His policy, so far as concerned the promotion of industry and agriculture, was adopted and pursued by several of his successors. From the middle ages of Japanese history taxes on land constituted the chief item of state revenue. It will be remembered that during the Tokugawa period four-tenths of the produce of the land went to the government and six-tenths to the farmer. There were two methods of collecting the tax. One was called _kemmi-dori_. According to this system, the quality of the rice raised from each particular place had to be determined annually and the rate of tax fixed accordingly. As the procedure was tedious, Yoshimune gave preference to the other method, _jōmen-dori_, the principle of which was to fix the rate of tax according to the average rice-harvest of the preceding five or ten years, and thenceforth, during the interval of years to which this rate applied, the farmers were required to pay the tax thus determined whatever might be the nature of the crops, exceptions being made, however, in the event of drought, tempest, or floods. The industrious hand of Yoshimune extended also to the domain of law. Throughout the government of Iyeyasu and his first successors no code of criminal law was specially enacted, the administrative maxim of the time being that moral doctrines should guide all officials, and that the judges should consult the dictates of their own conscience in dealing with criminals. But as popular knowledge increased, it became obviously necessary that uniformity of punishments should be secured by fixed and universally applicable laws. Yoshimune caused the various old laws to be collated and embodied into a fifteen-volume code, called "_Hatto-sho_." Another volume of law, the "_Kujikata-sho_," popularly called "_Gojō-sho hyak-ka-jō_," was prepared after consultation with various jurists and officials. These enactments constituted the complete criminal code of the Tokugawa. From its provisions were expunged all punishments such as had been practiced in times of war; examination by torture was restricted to cases the circumstances of which obviously dictated its application, and on the whole the object aimed at was to lighten the scale of punishment as far as possible. These criminal laws were not, however, made public. The people to whom they applied knew little of their precise provisions, only the officers charged with the duty of administering them having cognizance of their purport. The object of this system was to inculcate respect for the laws themselves rather than fear of the consequences of violating them.