ABSTRACT
One of the few concessions to political realities made by some of those who urge land tax reforms as one way of resolving some of the major problems of developing countries is to point to some other country as exemplifying their solution and its hoped-for outcome. Since most writers on this subject are apparently not willing to propose the imitation of the totalitarian regimes which are the only recent practitioners of the heavy land tax path to development, the inevitable result of this custom is a reverential mention of the case of late nineteenth-century Japan, with or without qualifications as to its applicability to the case in hand. 1
