The hanzei system as a land policy of the Muromachi bakufu is well-known and has been repeatedly investigated. However, it is less known that the original meaning of hanzei is literally "half-payment" of the tax. This meaning precedes the hanzei law promulgated by the Muromachi bakufu, and it had already appeared in the Kamakura period. During the Sengoku period, villagers in a suburb of Kyoto declared a hanzei and demanded their taxes be reduced by half. In this paper, the author investigates this type of hanzei by each of these villages and tries to regard it as one development of the yearly rice tax (nengu) reduction protests, which had been carried out by shoen-level leagues (shoke-no-ikki). The grounds for village hanzei lay in military mobilization by the bakufu. The bakufu, noticing the military forces built up by the villages (goshu), mobilized them in the suburbs of Kyoto and allowed them tax exemptions in the form of hanzei. For the villagers, who paid nengu, the hanzei exemption meant half-payment of that tax. However, even in those cases where hanzei was not permitted by the bakufu, the villagers proclaimed it anyway. For them, hanzei fell under the category of a nengu reduction. In this sense, the hanzei movement is a variation of the nengu reduction protests. Hanzei was proclaimed not only by isolated villages, but also by groups of villages over a wide area, which formed leagues called sogo or kumi. The ordinal nengu reduction protests were also regionally widespread. The hanzei movement was closely related with war mobilization and leagues calling for social justice by the government (tokusei-ikki). Hanzei was proclaimed as a part of tokusei, which was expected to be carried out with the outbreak of a war, and nengu reduction, even when not in the form of hanzei, was essentially an important part of tokusei proclamations.

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The study of the Hayashi Family 林家 (also pronounced Rinke) and the Shoheiko 昌平黌 academy Neo-Confucian orthodox intellectuals under the Tokugawa Bakufu's direct control is indispensable to understanding the intellectual milieu of the period. However, the research literature of them especially for the latter part of the period, is still very small. In the present paper the author utilizes the new methodology developed recently by such scholar as Fujita Satoru, and conducts the first historical study on the previously unknown involvement of the Rinke in Bakufu-Court relations, in an attempt to illuminate their role played in state affairs from the Kansei era (i.e. during the 19th century) and their perception of politics. During the late Tokugawa period, high-ranking Bakufu officials often consulted Daigaku-no-Kami 大学頭, who was the head of the Rinke, concerning their negotiations with the Court in Kyoto. These officials usually adopted the advice as policy. Therefore, the position of the Rinke in Bakufu politics seems to have been much more important than it used to be during the earlier period. Due to its leadership in the compilation of state documents, the Rinke were considered to be experts in political precedents and decorum. This specialized knowledge and its interpretation functioned, and was in reality employed to answer the demands for rationale to legitimate the Bakufu's authority. For example, on the occasion of state ceremonies in which the Court bestowed titles (kan'i, kanshoku) on the shogun in 1827 and 1837, the Daigaku-no-Kami at the time, Hayashi Jussai 林述斎, took part in the preceding negotiations between the Bakufu and the Court. He not only outlined in detail the ritual forms to be performed, but also played a role in deciding what honorary titles the Court was to confer upon the shogun at that time. The author proves that Jussai fully understood the effectiveness of decorating the authority of the shogun with honorary titles, and was well aware of how to use traditions and institutions of ancient states past to supplement that authority. On the other hand, such protocol was also related to legitimizing the authority of the Court and strengthened the idea that the traditional authority prior to Tokugawa was still meaningful in the early modern state and politics, and thus resulted in the Bakufu's approval and promotion of its existence. The Rinke was also involved in many other things that symbolized the authority of the shogunate, and as such could be called ideologues who consciously attempted to supplement the authority of the shogun by manipulating a whole system of such symbols. In the process of creating the forms for representing the kind of authority the Rinke favored, what happened was a substitution of shogunal authority for very highly symbolized things, thus furthering a tendency already evident within the Bakufu to give great emphasis and respect to pomp and circumstance and build a state organization through the medium of such symbolized forms. The author draws the following conclusions. The interpretations offered by the Rinke contained highly political elements, and such intentions were actually approved by the Bakufu's high ranking officials. For this reason, the political character of the Rinke can no longer be ignored. Concrete examples of this process working to strengthen the authority of the Bakufu can be seen in the relations conducted between the Bakufu and the Court. The utilization by the Rinke of various traditions and symbols was a very important element to the ideological complex inherent to the Tokugawa state.

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The mid-19th century in Britain, which was that country's golden age, is generally called the Age of Palmerston, because Viscount Palmerston controlled British foreign policy during this era from 1830 to 1865 as Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister. His foreign policy was the so-called gunboat diplomacy. In other words, it was an Imperialism of Free Trade and was well in evidence in the cases of the Turkish-Egyptian War in 1839, the Opium War in 1840, the Don Pacifico Affair in 1850, the Arrow War in 1856, and the Indian Mutiny in 1857. However, during the second Palmerston Ministry, British foreign policy was cautious not to interfere in wars or overseas affairs. For instance, Britain was never concerned in the Italian War in 1859, the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, the Polish Insurrection in 1863, and the Danish-Prussian War in 1864. In this paper the author analyzes the reason why the Second Palmerston Ministry never interfered with these affairs. On the one hand there was Palmerston's double standard of foreign policy, or of his innate care concerning foreign affairs. On the other hand, some historians conclude that the older Palmerston became the more cautious his foreigh policy appeared. However, the author argues that there are some defects in this reasoning, and urges the study of the history of British party politics at that time, because the Second Palmerston Government was the first Ministry of the Liberal Party after the Willis's Rooms meetings of June 1859. This cabinet was a coalition cabinet consisting of Whigs, Peelites and Radicals. In June 1859, Palmerston and his followers had to cooperate with Lord John Russell, who was a rival for the Liberal leadership and aligned with the Peelites and Radicals, in order to form the Second Palmerston Government. Therefore, Palmerston had to offer important offices to Russell, and Gladstone, a leading Peelite. So, some of his followers had to give up their claims to the offices they wanted. For instance, the Earl of Clarendon could not become Foreign Secretary because of Russell's assumption of that office, and Sir George Lewis could not be the Chancellor of the Exchequer because of W.E. Gladstone's requirement. In the end, the Second Palmerston Ministry consisted of 9 Whigs, 5 Peelites and 2 Redicals, and it was actually a coalition cabinet, but included many members who had formely opposed Palmerston's foreign policy. Therefore, Palmerston could not have the dominant voice in his cabinet concerning the process of decision-making in foreign policy. When the cabinet framed its policy toward the American Civil War, in which Russell, Gladstone, Lewis and Clarendon were leading actors, Russell and Gladstone advocated to propose mediation of the War, and Lewis and Clarendon (who was not in cabinet, but held strong influence among several cabinet members) opposed them. Also, their confrontation seemed to originate in the personal conflicts concerning the formation of the Government in the first place. Palmerston could not control his Second Ministry as he had ruled his first in the mid-1850's. One of reasons why he could not control his Government, and why he did not promote his gunboat diplomacy in his later years, seems to be the weakness of the newborn Liberal Party at a time when the Two-Party politics had yet to appear in Britain.

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