Once Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Bakufu at Edo, he started expanding the Castle and constructing the castle town. After the large-scale construction work, the city of Edo became the largest castle town during the Tokugawa period. In the center area for townspeople such as craftsmen and merchants, we can find some neighborhoods (cho 町) performing official duties for the Bakufu (kuniyaku 国役, which included providing technical labor services and materials) which deeply involved in the organization of space and society of the area. This article examines the neighborhoods concerned with official punishments by focusing on Honzaimoku-cho and Sumi-cho that provided lumber and bamboo used for executions as kuniyaku. Since punishment plays a crucial role in ordering society and exercising power, a study of the neighborhoods would be effective in understanding how the penal system worked and the society of townspeople area in the shogun’s capital was organized.
Beginning with an analysis of Sumi-cho in regard to its space arrangement, demographic structure, and bamboo merchants including official purveyors who lived there, this paper shows that some specific neighborhoods supplied main materials for official punishments and had carried them to the execution grounds or the government office. Based on the case of Honzaimoku-cho, as lumber merchants had decreased and outcastes had settled there from the late 17th century, the rapid increase of executions in the early 18th century triggered the change in the way of preparing those materials. The members of the outcaste group came to take charge of the practical business on behalf of the towns-people responsible for supplying lumber, which indicates the change of the community where various social groups had mingled. Regardless of the transition, the framework under which Honzaimoku-cho offered kuniyaku had been maintained until the beginning of the Meiji period.
While previous studies have paid much attention to outcastes involved in the administration of punishments, the above facts made it clear that the system would not have continued to work without the roles of these neighborhoods. Not only the principle of the status system but also that of kuniyaku formed the basis of the Tokugawa penal system. The society of townspeople area played an essential role to maintain the system and the order of the city of Edo during the Tokugawa period.

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The present article examines political trends among the Hokkaido Administrative Agency (Hokkaido-Cho 北海道庁) and the Hokkaido branches of the Rikken Seiyukai and Rikken Minsei Parties during the era of the Saito Makoto Cabinet era (May 1932‐July 1934), focusing on the topic of policy dealing with natural disasters, in an attempt to pursue and clarify an aspect of regional politics yet to draw the attention of historians of modern Japan in general and of that era in particular. It was on the occasion of the flooding of the lower reaches of the Ishikari River for over forty days and crop damage due to unseasonal freezing temperatures, that the Hokkaido branches of the Minsei and Seiyukai (Min-Sei) Parties decided to put aside their differences and jointly sponsor the Hokkaido Citizens Conference on Remedial Measures in Dealing with Crop Failure and Flooding. The final declaration of the Conference, which was related to issues surrounding the 2nd Hokkaido Reclamation Plan and natural disaster policy, helped reaffirm that Plan, which had been a point of contention in the political rivalry between the two parties, as a bi-partisan issue transcending party politics. The Citizens Conference steering committee, which was comprised of both Min-Sei Party members, immersed itself in the subject of recovery measures for the Island with the cooperation of all the Administration Agency bureaus, while bi-partisan Hokkaido Assemblymen made inspection tours of the disaster areas and Diet members representing Hokkaido appealed to Min-Sei Party central headquarters to pass measures for disaster relief. One achievement of the Citizens Conference steering committee was to persuade then Agricultural Minister Goto Fumio to make a grand inspection tour of Hokkaido, after which Goto reported on the disasters to the Saito Cabinet, resulting in relief action, such as food allotments and a generous relief fund.
However, measures to restore Hokkaido's infrastructure did not meet with the same success as the relief efforts. In response to a request from Hokkaido Diet members and the Administrative Agency for loans amounting to 100million yen and proposals by the Assembly and Administrative Agency to fund water control planning separately from the 2nd Reclamation Plan, Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo granted rehabilitation funds totalling only 10 million yen and refused to accept the latter fiscal budgeting proposal. From that time on, the Hokkaido branches of the Min-Sei parties waged a long-term campaign to formulate a development plan for the Island. For example, in May 1933, the two branches voted unanimously at the 2nd Citizens Conference on revisions to the 2nd Reclamation Plan, and the document, “Outline of a Revised Reclamation Plan” drafted by the Conference steering committee became the progressive development plan advocated by the 2nd Reclamation Plan revision movement of 1935.

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This article focuses on the international relationships surrounding the “Trautmann Mediation”, an unsuccessful attempt by German Ambassador to China Oskar Trautmann to broker peace between Japan and Jiang Jieshi's Guomindang Government shortly after the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war. Much of the research to date on the Mediation, which began in November 1937 and ended without success in January 1938, has concluded that the ceasefire terms, proposed three times by a militarily advantageous Japan were too harsh, forcing the Chinese side to reject them. Even the Chinese sources, it has been stated, confirm Jiang Jieshi's uncompromising attitude towards Japan. However, since the ceasefire terms had been proposed and discussed before what can only be described as a change of heart on Jiang's part, the determining factors of Jiang's rejection have not yet been fully elucidated. This article focuses on Jiang's contradictory behavior concerning the proposed ceasefire agreement article calling for a joint Sino-Japanese anti-Communist front contained in the 2nd set of Japanese proposals, in an attempt to explain such behavior from the Sino-Soviet non-aggression pact negotiations and the place of the joint anti-communist front proposal within the Trautmann Mediation.
After the Lugou Bridge Incident of 7-8 July 1937, the issue of concluding a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and China had become more crucial to both countries than ever before; however, the Soviet Union still did not rule out the possibility of the Chinese soon coming to terms with the Japanese and agreeing to a joint anti-Communist front. Due to such suspicions, the Chinese agreed in a secret declaration that “China will not conclude any joint anti-Communist pact”, thus dispelling any possibility of betrayal.
When Trautmann presented the second set of proposals on 2 December 1937, Jiang made no attempt to oppose Japan’s joint anti-Communist front demands, while at the same time telling the Soviet Union, “I will not discuss any joint anti-Communist proposals”, due to the existence of the Sino-Soviet non-aggression pact. At this same time, while requesting Stalin to join the war effort, Jiang was also leaving the possibility open for continuing negotiations with the Japanese; but then seeing that the Soviet Union was willing to uphold the non-aggression pact, he decided to maintain relations with the USSR. Even after the Soviet Union refused to enter the war Jiang's expectations toward the USSR never changed. Then after deciding to reject the third set of proposals offered by Trautmann on 28 December, Jiang met with Soviet Ambassador Luganets-Orel'ski to request Soviet support for continuing the anti-Japanese war of resistance. In sum, Jiang's seemingly contradictory attitude towards Japan and the Soviet Union stemmed all along from expectations of support from the latter based on their mutual non-aggression pact, which he judged to be the most effective way to conduct an anti-Japanese war of resistance.

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