From the 15^<th> century on, the Korean Choson Dynasty used the monarch's personal royal seal inscribed with the phrase "governance through virtue" (為政以徳) on the documents it dispatched to Japan. Then in 1624, the monarch's official state seal, inscribed "seal of execution" (施命之宝) appeared replacing the former seal, thus marking a change from personal correspondence to official diplomatic notification. This change came about against the backdrop of the weakening of the Ming Dynasty's commonwealth protection of Korea and the latter's reorganization of foreign diplomacy in accordance with its direct mandate under "heaven" (天). Only a few decades previous, during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's attempted invasions of Korea (1592-98), the Koreans had relied heavily on Ming China to avoid Japanese demands; but beginning in 1620, China's inability to fend off the Jurchen kingdom of Aisin Gurun became all too clear, and in response, Choson Korea had no alternative but to seek friendly relations with Japan. It was in 1624 that Korea first informed Japan of its sovereignty under heaven (天の申命), without any details about the situation in China, and made official gestures of friendship as the master of its own diplomatic fate. Furthermore, despite the fact that the Korea remained in a tributary relationship with China, by its international pronouncement that it stood was responsible only to heaven in foreign policy decision making, the tributary relationship was relativized by the independent diplomatic stance towards Japan, symbolized by a conscious substitution of the Korean monarch's official seal of state for his personal one.

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The importance of the local administrative officials (gunji 郡司) in ancient Japan is undisputed; however, the research to date has yet to rigorously examine gunji either positively or institutionally. This article will approach the subject through an investigation of the procedure called gunjidokuso 郡司読奏, which was conducted upon the appointment of new gunji. Structurally speaking, the dokuso 読奏 procedure involved the examination of candidates in the presence of the emperor and also signified the transformation of local powerful figures into the role of appointed government officials. The procedure involved imperial appointment and the intervention of the Ministry of State (dajokan 太政官). As to the institutional origins of dokuso, the author focuses on the litigation system established during the reign of Emperor Kotoku (AD 645-54), called shoki-no-sei 鍾匱の制, for settling disputes before the emperor. The author argues that this system was similar to dokuso and that the time of its establishment coincided with the time in which the sub-district administrative system (koori 評) was set up. The relationships between the emperor and local powerful figures prior to the Taika Reforms was mediated by a central aristocracy similar to the workings of the bemin 部民 patron-client system of social organization. The establishment of dokuso during Kotoku's reign brought about a transformation of such indirect affiliation into a system of direct control by the central state over local affairs, symbolized by the direct link between the emperor and gunji, thus showing the importance of the latter in ancient Japanese society. Dokuso lost this substantive meaning during the midtenth century and while continuing on in name only, was forced to give, way to a new set of basic principles for local governance.

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