Basically, both groups were against allowing the developing middle class and especially the merchants to gain too much freedom, and whatever freedom they in fact gained, came through extra-legal or illegal practices.  A proverb of the time said “People hate their ruler as animals hate the net (of the hunter)”.  The basic laws of medieval times which had attempted to create stable social classes remained:  down to the nineteenth century there were slaves, different classes of serfs or “commoners”, and free burghers.  Craftsmen remained under work obligation.  Merchants were second-class people.  Each class had to wear dresses of special colour and material, so that the social status of a person, even if he was not an official and thus recognizable by his insignia, was immediately clear when one saw him.  The houses of different classes differed from one another by the type of tiles, the decorations of the doors and gates; the size of the main reception room of the house was prescribed and was kept small for all non-officials; and even size and form of the tombs was prescribed in detail for each class.  Once a person had a certain privilege, he and his descendants even if they had lost their position in the bureaucracy, retained these privileges over generations.  All burghers were admitted to the examinations and, thus, there was a certain social mobility allowed within the leading class of the society, and a new “small gentry” developed by this system.

Yet, the wars of the transition period had created a feeling of insecurity within the gentry.  The eleventh and twelfth centuries were periods of extensive social legislation in order to give the lower classes some degree of security and thus prevent them from attempting to upset the status quo.  In addition to the “ever-normal granaries” of the state, “social granaries” were revived, into which all farmers of a village had to deliver grain for periods of need.  In 1098 a bureau for housing and care was created which created homes for the old and destitute; 1102 a bureau for medical care sent state doctors to homes and hospitals as well as to private homes to care for poor patients; from 1104 a bureau of burials took charge of the costs of burials of poor persons.  Doctors as craftsmen were under corvee obligation and could easily be ordered by the state.  Often, however, Buddhist priests took charge of medical care, burial costs and hospitalization.  The state gave them premiums if they did good work.  The Ministry of Civil Affairs made the surveys of cases and costs, while the Ministry of Finances paid the costs.  We hear of state orphanages in 1247, a free pharmacy in 1248, state hospitals were reorganized in 1143.  In 1167 the government gave low-interest loans to poor persons and (from 1159 on) sold cheap grain from state granaries.  Fire protection services in large cities were organized.  Finally, from 1141 on, the government opened up to twenty-three geisha houses for the entertainment of soldiers who were far from home in the capital and had no possibility for other amusements.  Public baths had existed already some centuries ago; now Buddhist temples opened public baths as social service.