[Liu] Shifu 師復 (1884-1915) was one of the pioneer anarchists in modern Chinese history. He established the Huiming xueshe 晦鳴学舎 in Guangzhou in 1912 for the research and promotion of anarchism, and began to publish Huiming lu 晦鳴録 (later Minsheng 民声), its journal, in 1913. He was the first active Chinese anarchist inside China, while other Chinese anarchist movements were active outside China in Tokyo and Paris before the Revolution of 1911. Since Shifu was deeply influenced by Kropotkin, students have identified Shifu's anarchism with this Russian thinker. If one reads Shifu's works carefully, however, he will find significant differences between the two, which reveal characteristics not only of Shifu's anarchism in particular, but also of modern Chinese anarchism in general. In this paper the author analyzes Shifu's thought focussing on his logic and sense of value in comparison with modern European anarchists, including Kropotkin. In Chapter I he discusses Shifu's image of the ideal society. For European anarchists freedom was their ultimate common value, and therefore they had the common image of an ideal society where freedom was perfectly fulfilled, in spite of differences and contradictions in terms of how to realize it. On the other hand, for Shifu freedom was one of the esteemed values along with equality, social justice, moral perfection and peace. Shifu thought that these values were compatible with each other, and therefore in his ideal society all these values would have to be fulfilled simultaneously and perpetually. In Chapter II the author examines Shifu's logic in his denial of the government with special reference to Bakunin's logic. Bakunin denied government within a basic framework of individual freedom vis-a-vis government, and to him the establishment of government meant the suppression of individual freedom. The abolition of government was required, more than anything, in order to protect and realize individual freedom. In the case of Shifu, his basic framework was the imperfect society at present and the ideal society. To him the contemporary society was imperfect not only because it suppressed individual freedom, but also because it showed social injustice, inequality, crime, and moral corruption. Shifu thought all these evils were due to the existence of government. To him the abolition of government meant, more than anything, the realization of ideal society. Chapter III analyzes Shifu's notion of ziyou 自由, or freedom. His notion of ziyou was harmonious, because to him individual freedom meant not the freedom of isolated individuals, but the freedom of individuals in a community. He thought men were community-oriented by nature, thus communality had been built into his notion of ziyou from the beginning. In other words, although he frequently mentioned juedui ziyou 絶対自由 (absolute freedom) or wuzhixian zhi ziyou 無制限之自由 (unlimited freedom), his ziyou was relative and limited in reality, because it was justified as far as it was compatible with equality and social justice among community members. To European anarchists the realization of individual freedom was the ultimate object, and since it could not be realized in any governmental society, they planned ideal society which was non-governmental. To Shifu the realization of ideal community, which was harmonious and free from all the evils of contemporary governmental society, was the ultimate object. Individual freedom was only one of the values he thought should be pursued.

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Within the recent rise in interest concerning village life in Japan's medieval and early modern periods, I attempt to make a contribution from the standpoint of the concept of ie 家 (the family) by investigating the Nishi 西 family of Kurodamiya 黒田宮 village of Yamaguni 山国 estate in the province of Tanba 丹波. By reconstructing the actual situation of peasant dozoku 同族 kin-ship organization during the late medieval and early modern periods, I clarifiy when these organizations were formed, how they were transformed over time, and how these changes affected miyamura 宮村 village structure. First, I show that the Nishi family was established around the late fifteenth-early sixteenth century as a perpetual organization passing both the family name and wealth to each succeeding generation directly through a patrilineal line of descent. I then use a number of family documents written during the Genroku 元禄 era (1688-1704) to construct a family genealogy and analyze its dozoku organization. I find that the Nishi family dozoku organization went through a three stage transformation marked by 1)the formation of the Konishi Tarojiro branch family during the latter half of the sixteenth century, 2)the formation of the Kaminishi and Shimonishi branch families around the turn from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, and 3)the formation of the Shichizaemon and Kazaemon branch families during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Structurally speaking, these events marked a process of change from a group of families each with the equal commoner status of otona-byakusho 乙名百姓 to a dozoku organization of families ranked according to pedigree from the main, or original branch, (honke 本家) on down. Moreover, as this transformation took place, the village miya-za 宮座 organization also began to change accordingly from an exclusive group of the village's otona-byakusho status holders during the Sengoku period to an organization that included dozoku branch family members with the lesser Status of kobyakusho 小百姓. Finally, I raise the problem of the origin of the dozoku organization. Given my findings concerning Yamaguni estate that this social group came into existence during the latter half of the fifteen century at the earliest, I criticize the ahistorical social anthropological assumption that the organization existed from the most primitive times. To the contrary, I present the villages around Kyoto as one model of the typical Japanese village that was established during the Sengoku period as a highly organized social complex based on the four principles of the village za 座, dozoku family groupings, the toya 当屋 institution of alternating shrine priests, and a seniority-based age group ranking system. Therefore, those villages discovered by scholars in other fields that seem to be based exclusively on just one of those principles should be considered as exceptions to this typical case.

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The Irish Civil War (1922-23) is a rare field of study in the research on the history of Irish independence. The Civil War which followed the Anglo-Irish War broke out between the Separatist Republicans and the Free Staters who accepted Irish independence as having Dominion status within the British Common-wealth. The Irish Civil War is seen by many to stem from the conflict arising from the constitutional status of the resulting independence. Here the author reexamines the Civil War with regard to the Irish Volunteers' organisation during the Anglo-Irish War. The first point is the relationship between Volunteers and Dail Eireann, the Irish national assembly. Since their foundation in 1913 the Irish Volunteers had been an autonomous body, and they were not exactly the "regular force" subordinate to the Dail. There were some attempts to define the Irish Volunteers as the "regular force", but these definitions were not adequate enough. The fact that the anti-government Republican Irregulars in the Civil War kept completely independent from the Separatist Republican leaders is probably related to the way in which the Irish Volunteers were organised during the Anglo-Irish War. The second point concerns the relationship between the Volunteers GHQ and local Volunteers units. In the process of promoting a guerilla war based on each unit's self-sufficiency, some units, especially the Munster Volunteers who were the most active units during the Anglo-Irish War, were de-centralised. The fact that the Munster area would be a stronghold for the Republican Irregulars in the Civil War should be attributed to the strong independent character and high political consciousness instilled in the Munster Volunteers from the time of the Anglo-Irish War. From these observations, the author concludes that for the Free State government the Irish Civil War presented the critical problem of how an armed force should be reorganised in a newly independent state.

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