The present article is an attempt to clarify in what way the Kamakura Bakufu perceived and took on and made to function police protection authority for the various provinces. There were two aspects to the authority gained by Shogun Minamoto-no-Yoritomo in 1190. The first involved the protection of the capital city of Kyoto, the suppression of insurrection, and the arrest of murderers by provincial constables (shugo 守護) invested with authority exceeding the powers of individual land proprietors (ryoshu 領主). The other aspect involved police action against such crimes as night raiding and the like by Bakufu vassals (gokenin 御家人) ; it ensured and protected the law enforcement rights of land proprietors with that authority. At that time, it was Yoritomo who was most interested in this authority, to be able to establish his positions as the "leader (toryo 棟梁) of the warrior class" and bestow his vassals a place in the societal framework. However, with end of the line of Minamoto 源 Shoguns and the collapse of the military power of the imperial court as a result of its clash in 1221 with the Bakufu, the latter's vassals rose as the main force in carrying out police protection in the province, Consequently, the Bakufu had to come up with a more efficient and organized system of law enforcement. In its legal code, the Goseibai-Shikimoku 御成敗式目 the law enforcement jurisdiction of shugo provincial constables was broadened and their ultimate right to enter (i. e., police) the lands of locally-based warrior proprietors (jito 地頭) was also guaranteed. Then, after the investiture of prince Munetaka 宗尊 as Shogun, shugo, jito, and the residents of jito proprietorships were organized vertically into a Bakufu law enforcement hierarchy, while a horizontal organization made up of neighboring jito was established, thus forming a consolidated peace keeping system. Nevertheless, when the Bakufu attempted to take effective step in law enforcement to deal with the worsening problems caused by outlaw groups of warriors (akuto 悪党), sole reliance on the strength of its loyal vassals reached its limits. This is why in the "benevolent acts" (tokusei 徳政) of the Koan 弘安 era (1278-88), all land proprietors throughout Japan were mobilized in the law enforcement effort. It turned out, however that the ultimate framework of this policy came to include only Bakufu vassals. And even during the regency of Hojo Takatoki (1316-26), a scheme to mobilize residents of the aristocratic complete jurisdictional proprietorships (honjo-ichien-chi 本所一円地) also failed. Throughout its existence the Bakufu was unable to go beyond its initial framework for protecting the provinces with its corps of vassals, and the problem of how to mobilize all of the country's land proprietors into a system of law enforcement became an issue for the next generation to solve.

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Recently an excavation at the site of Fujiwara Capital, Nara unearthed a wooden tablet dating from the Taiho era (701-703) containing the phrase "5 ryo and 2 mon of silver 銀五両二文". Ryo is a weight unit and the mon is a unit of currency. Therefore, this tablet substantiates the author's hypothesis that "plain silver coins" were Japan's earliest money and that they had fixed metal value. He also checked other wooden tablets that might relate to silver or silver coins and reached the following conclusions. 1. There were silver coins weighing one bu 分 since before the Fuhon and Wadokaiho coins. Bu is a weight unit introduced from China. These coins were counted by units of bu or mon 文 and four pieces made up one ryo 両. Bu stressed weight while mon was a coin unit. 2. Another unit seen on wooden tablets is hyo or hakari 秤 (weighing), which was used only for silver so far as we know. An unfamiliar unit han 楓, appears often used together with hyo. This usage strongly suggests that the term han itself designated the applied material, which was the same or similar to silver. On the uses of han and hyo, they are not seen in relation to high and low unit ranks. Han is always used with an integral number but hyo often has a half fraction. Therefore han was a unit to count plain silver coins like mon. and the hyo was a unit of the same value but used in the case of weighing like bu. 3. The creation of special Japanese unit names possibly resulted from the order of the 12^th year of Emperor Tenmu, which prohibited silver coins and allowed its use as metal silver alone. People had to refrain from using currency unit names in order to show that they were obeying the order. The distinction between counting and weighing units must have been caused by the emergence of altered coins reduced in weight, which is inevitable for coins of fixed metal value. 4. Silver plain coins were used frequently enough to give rise to Japanese proper unit names. Some wooden tablets record that they were used to purchase high-quality cloth ra or pay "plough costs". Another tablet reveals that silver coins were sent from provinces far from the capital, such as Wakasa, Iki, and Shima. 5. By the Taiho era, silver coins were fully revived and counted by mon. the normal name of a coin unit, at the Central Ministry. The existence of plain silver coins was the basis of wily policy to replace them with silver coins of Wado-kaiho and then by copper coins of the same name all at the same exchange value.

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During the mid-19^<th> century, a chain of large-scale Muslim uprisings broke out in northwest and southwest regions of Qing Empire, simultaneously with the Taiping Rebellion and other violent disturbances. These uprisings are quite important to consider when one is to studying ethnic problems, nationalism, and geopolitics in modern East Asia from the cases of china's Muslim minorities. This article focuses on, among them, the Yunnan Muslim Uprising (雲南回民起義) especially on its earliest stages, in which serious conflicts between Han-Chinese (漢人) and Muslim residents (回民) took place in the western part of Yunnan laying the foundation for a widespread uprising, and examines concretely how these conflicts were generated and what made them structural. The conclusions reached are: 1. The conflicts became tangible action at the beginning of 19^<th> century, as the huge tide of immigration to this area brought about a rapid increase of population and intense competition among the people. However, at first, the rift between Han-chinese and Muslims was only a part of various fissures within the local society, and neither "Han" nor "Muslim" was a unified socio-ethnic collectivity. "Han" was usually divided into several ethnic categories, mostly based on birthplaces, and Muslim also consisted of divers segments. 2. However, it may be assumed that the "Muslim" category defined by Islamic faith, practices, and customs was perceived more strongly than other types of social fissures. Moreover, the socio-economic advantages enjoyed by Yunnan 'Muslims as the earliest immigrants and their widespread networks formed by a myriad of mosques (清真寺) attracted many Muslim newcomers to concentrate, providing them with a basis for mutual aid, security, and social opportunity. 3. On the other hand, the weakness of the local administrations and the extremely competitive nature of the immigrant society gave rise to secret societies bound by pledges of brotherhood (焼香結盟) as a system of mutual aid and security deep-rooted in local society, which drew people beyond preceding various social divisions. Such collectivities were quite similar to their Muslim counterparts mentioned above, and it could be said that they were different manifestations of the same group-forming motivation. 4. Therefore, the two types of collectivities came into intense conflict as they grew larger and stronger. Also, the reinforcement of the religious elements in each of them remarkably delineated and essentialized the "Muslim" category. Thus, seeds of Han / Muslim conflict were widely disseminated in local society, and consequently, entering into this dichotomous structure of conflict became an option in seeking self-interest ; then, divers forms of discord came to be reinterpreted upon this strcture.

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