Along the coast of the Huang Ho ships could sail from Lan Chou to Ho Kou Chen. This water transport was used as the main economic artery connecting the North West of China and Peking. Medicines and other things were carried down on a raft from Lan Chou. Ho Kou Chen had grown more prosperous year by year in the Ching Dynasty as the terminus of this water transport.
Neither the officers of the central government nor those of the local government resided in Ho Kou Chen. The municipal administration was in the hands of an organization called ho chieh. Ho chieh was at first a territorial unit like a village having p'ai - a neighbourhood unit composed of ten houses - as its main substructure. With the development of commerce and industry, however, the p'ai turned into a gild merchant since merchant capital - mainly rice brokers and pawnbrokers - had come to hold real power. This organization had, therefore, a joint gild of rice brokers and pawnbrokers as its main constituents and many other gilds, such as the trade gild, the area gild, the neighbourhood gild etc. were placed under its control.
The gild merchant had two chiefs called hsiang ch'i. They were elected from, for instance, the rice brokers and they held their office at the hsiang ch'i fu. They had the pao chang do the administrative work. The pao chang arose from the pao chia system-an administrative organization, but actually the pao chang were employees of the ho chieh and were paid by them. In Ho Kou Chen there was nothing that had any connection with the government administration, nor was any kind of government autonomy enforced. Instead, the gild merchant, acting as go-between for the government officials and the people, carried on the peripheral affairs of the autocracy in obedience to the officials' orders on the one hand, and forced the officials to accept requests from the people on the other hand. One case of the former was the construction of embankments and one of the latter was the abolition of double taxation. So far as the municipal administration was concerned, the officials could do nothing without the help of the gild merchant and the gild merchant had no authority without the backing of the Ch'ing Dynasty. This was the real fact of the so-called "autocratic dynasty." The jobs of the hsiang ch'i fu (they were not undertaken on that body's own initiative) were to execute the municipal administrative affairs such as. administration of the court of justice, of the police, of the night watch; economic administration such as the standardization of weights and measures; public undertakings such as schools, wells, ferries; religious undertakings such as dedication of plays; various kinds of charitable undertakings and so on.Moreover, it did some temporary works such as offering prayers for rain in case of drought. It was a noticeable fact that the gild merchant had its own army, not the army of the government, and looked after the safety of the city and traffic.
Most of the various groups in Ho Kou Chen were at first neighbourhood units or area units, the latter being organized in every hsien in most cases, but with the development of commerce and industry, the gilds came to take the place of these units. After the appren-ticecraftman system was established, paternal autocracy thoroughly permeated every workshop on the one hand and on the other hand the family came into power as a communistic unit as a natural result of the feudalistic commerce and industry. The ho huo system was established as a structure for such commerce and industry as this. All storekeepers were under the control of merchant capital and at the same time they belonged to a community-like-fellowship. This contradictory state of affairs resulted in both disorganization and reactionary strengthening of the feudalistic commerce and industry. The gild was an organization founded on the feudalistic commerce and industry. It was organized differently for different trades.

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Ancient Indian Laws are all very religious. The same holds good of the Law of Manu which I deal with here. In this Law, one who indulges in anti-social behavior must be punished, but on the other hand, he must be purified by himself in practicing the penance ordered by the law. Because an anti-social behavior is considered sinful from the point of view of religion and at the same time it is composed of criminal offence. These two are not considered separately at this time.
There are two sorts of sins and crimes. One is a great sin or crime, and the other is a secondary sin or crime. I examined purifications and punishments for those sins and crimes.

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An ordinance on the 28th of March in 728 established some differences in the course of the promotion to the aristocratic officials. This establishment continued long after, though the standard of making the differences was somewhat changed in 745 or 746.
The differences were made by such standard as lofty lineage and learned talent for leading the political ideas. But it is notable that the differences were provided to be decided not only by this standard but also by the emperor's special awarding right.
The course of the promotion was decided by the status of an official's own clan or family but there was no well-regulated book to distinguish between the courses. We may consider an official took respectively one course according to the standard of distinction and the precedents. But, in the 9th century, we can sometimes find clans or families that advanced to the higher ranks with the violent logic on the basis of the rise of their social status.
Next, the standard of the course of the female promotion was similar to that of a male official from the 8th to the early 9th century. But it is evident that the standard was connected with the emperor's special awarding right because of the females' private connections with the emperors and princes, their marital relations with the leading higher nobility and their conditions based on the female peculiarity.

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Though the historical researches in the Soviet Union came to attract attention through its translation and introduction, vet they are not throughly known to Japan.
The article by K. M. Kolobova and L. N. Kazamanoba on the city law of Gortyna, Crete, tries to go through the process of constructing classical slavery society founded on the dissolution of the primitive community through the city law and comes to the conclusion that the word "slavery" «δοςυλο ?? » is not yet be used as contrasting with "free men" and the words implicating the category of subordination are so much used.
And I mentioned the articles by E. L. Kazakevitch trying to argue that the multifariousness of the words meaning "slavery" reflects vice versa the clear class opposition between the slavery and free men and deepens it more. But on account of spaces given I want to introduce their details on other chance.
Finally I listed the articles of Soviet scholars relating to the Greek-Roman history.
I should be happy to be of service to the Japanese scholars for information on the academic situation of ancient history in the Soviet Union.

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Omaezaki is a tableland promontory, projected into the Sea of Enshu, at the western side of the mouth of the Suruga Bay. In the north of this promontory, facing the Suruga Bay, there are two village communities, Meiwa and Futatsuya ; in the east is the community of Shimomisaki and in the south, facing the Sea of Enshu, are the two communities of Kamimisaki and Hirosawa. Omaezaki Mura (the Village of Omaezaki) consisted of these five communities, whose inhabitants used to depend chiefly on fishery for their living. In this village, an established fishing practice had been handed down from of old, in due observance of which the people there had made their living. And this fishing practice consisted of the following agreements : limiting each community's piscary within the sea in front of it, restricting the number of the fishing boats within that of the hitherto taxed ones, and disapproving the new attempts of fishing.
In this village of Omaezaki, around 1844, there arose a judicial dispute concerning fishery right, which was submitted to the court of Jisha-bugyo (Commissioner of Temples and Shrines) in 1850 and was finally settled in thirty-one years. The beginning of the dispute was that the people in Futatsuya bought a used boat and launched towing net fishing in the piscary of Kamimisaki and Hirosawa communities. At first, these two communities connived at it because it did not disturb them. But, as it gradually developed into a large-scale fishing, they called for its discontinuance, but the Futatsuya people did not comply with it. The two comunities commplained to the magistrate's office of an offence of the customary practice but no settlement was reached between them. Therefore, in the aforesaid year, the two communities appealed to the court of Kanjo-bugyo (Commissioner of Treasury) concerning the Futatsuya people's wrongdoing. But, a day before it, the latter had already taken to Jisha-bugyo an action against an interruption of their fishing. In consequence, contrary to their intention, the former came to be examined as the defendants of the latter's law suit. It seemed that a compromise was reached between them and this dispute was brought to a settlement, but the Futatsuyama people, without assenting to it, again took an action to Jisha-bugyo with the claim and suitor changed. And thus we have a thirty long years' judicial dispute.
What the plaintiffs assert is that, despite their having fishery right in the defendants' piscary, they are prevented from exercising it and that they will be disabled from keeping their living and paying taxes. Refuting this, the defendants insist that the plaintiffs' assertion is entirely wrong and against the customary practice. Once this offence be admitted, as they say, it would be impossible to maintain their living and tax-paying, not to mention the peace in the village.
Fishery disputes of this sort were not rare in those days. This particular dispute, however, is of great help in understanding the actual circumstances of the judicial procedures in those days because of the completeness of its extant materials, such as the descriptions of subpoena, court attendance or trial, the exhibits, the documentary evidences, etc.

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In this paper, I have made an inquiry into the San-chi-sei of fu (_??_), ken (_??_), and han (_??_) in the Early Meiji Era, especially into the part played by fu during the period just before the abolition of han (clans) and into the establishment of ken (prefecture) from the historical point of view of the word fu. Thus, I have partly made clear the process of the establishment of the centralized national government from the viewpoint of the constitutional history.

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