The Shoku Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan, Continued) is the official court history of eighth-century Japan. Presented to the court of Emperor Kanmu in two recensions, 794 and 797, it comprises the annals of the Japanese imperial court from 697 to 791. This voluminous chronicle, five volumes in the standard edition, contains an enormous amount of information on the imperial institution, economic and demographic history, and also a great amount of detail on the system of court ranks instituted in the Taihō Ritsuryō, promulgated in 701 and 702. In this study I present briefly data on the total numbers of court ranks appearing in Shoku Nihongi, as well as information on the growth of the system over the forty volumes, or maki, of the chronicle. The raw data appears in a matrix developed in an MS Excel spreadsheet and available here. Below are a number of preliminary charts and graphs based on this data. These are merely suggestions, and those students with an interest in the subject are welcome to make use of the data in any way they might see fit. Note that the old system of court ranks instituted by Emperor Tenmu gives way almost immediately to the new Ritsuryō system. The data were compiled by searching for each occurrence of the 112 ranks appearing in Shoku Nihongi in each of the forty maki. This produced a gross count of 9,929 instances. The largest single court rank, that of Jr Fifth Lower, appeared 2,555 times. The next largest was Jr Fifth Upper, with a total frequency of 1,020. This demonstrates that the bulk of the court aristocracy held these ranks. Obviously there is much repetition, since individuals with the same rank are counted repeatedly, so that a putative net count of individual courtiers would be much smaller. However, one possible avenue of research might be to identify particular courtiers and to trace their ascent through the bureaucracy over the eighth century. Fujiwara no Asomi Nakamaro would be an excellent test case for such an approach. The first graph shows the frequency of each type of court rank, with the obvious peak at 2,555, while the second shows the growth over time, with a trendline. Note that the table on page 3 gives a breakdown of the forty maki by date. Some maki cover only a single year in the western calendar, while others extend over as many as six years. The final two graphs show the growth over time of the Jr Fifth rank and the top six ranks.