to require provincial governors and local magistrates to patrol embankments close to a big river and renovate them after the fall harvest if they needed repairs or do so whenever they were found wrecked.

# Column Public Works Undertaken by Gyoki

In the ancient days of Japan, religious practitioners played a dominant role in the development of the nation's infrastructures. In those days, the Japanese Buddhist priests who had sailed as an envoy to Tang Dynasty China not only acquired the latest doctrines of Buddhism in the continent but brought back the then state-of-the-art concepts and expertise of civil engineering as they came home to Japan. As an example, Dosho (629 to 700), who visited Tang Dynasty China in 653, is said to have learned the Ritagyo (altruistic practices) of Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhism from Genjosanzo (Xuanzang), purportedly a model of Sanzo Hoshi appearing in Hsi-yu-chi (Journey to the West). Ritagyo is the way of the Buddha who not only pursued his own state of enlightenment but is dedicated to self-annihilation for the benefit of others. Monks are said to have sought learning from their practices of civil-engineering works, which were in accord with their concepts as they provided labor to make for a better living environment in the interest of the public.

Figure 1-1-2 Seated Statue of Gyoki (duplicate)

Source) Picture courtesy of the Osaka Prefectural Sayamaike Museum.

Among them, Gyoki (668 to 749), a disciple of Dosho, is remembered as religious practitioner who had left the most brilliant achievements among all. Initially, Gyoki was accepted as a wicked monk who kept people astray and his missionary work was suppressed by the imperial court $ ^{Note} $ .

Figure 1-1-3 Infrastructures Developed by Gyoki

Kind	Number	Location
Ponds	15	Kawachi (1), Izumi (8), Settsu (6)
Ditches	6	Kawachi (1), Izumi (2), Settsu (3)
Dykes	4	Kawachi (1), Settsu (3)
Sluices (Note)	3	Kawachi (3)
Road	1	A road leading to Kawachi and Settsu
Bridges	6	Yamashiro (2), Settsu (4)
Funayasu (harbors)	2	Izumi (1), Settsu (1)
Fuseya	9	Yamashiro (2), Kawachi (2), Izumi (2), Settsu (3)

(Note) Watergates and tubes through which water is discharged from reservoirs or the like (sluiceways and sluice pipes)

Source) Developed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) from a chronicle of Gyoki in "The Dictionary of Gyoki" authored by Kaoru Inoue.

Under an ancient system of centralized governance based on the Ritsuryo (law and code), when people were ordered to pay taxes, such as Yo (taxes in kind) and Cho (tributes) or provide labor, they had to travel to and from the capital by carrying their own supplies of food to fulfill their duties. Travelers would suffer from hunger and diseases and may fell dead along the way. For this reason, Gyoki built welfare facilities, called “Fuseya,” to practice the Ritagyo, providing food and lodging to the travelers and thus save them. While propagating adherence to the Ritagyo, Gyoki led practiced his teachings by leading people to construct civil-engineering works with funding from local powerful families, digging irrigation reservoirs and ditches, opening roads, building bridges and more (Figure 1-1-3). These activities not only resulted in a growing number of people following Gyoki’s teachings but also enriched the powerful families’ land. In 723, the Sanze-isshin Law, or a law that endorses the ownership of reclaimed land for three generations, was enforced to revise the land system then based on public land ownership, to authorize those who had reclaimed land to owner for a certain period of time, encouraging voluntary reclamation. Such change to Japan’s land system helped broaden