This article offers a historical account of "mental hygiene" in England between 1890 and 1930, based on medical journals, newspapers and parliamentary publications, in order to document the process by which medico-political ideas and practice for the prevention of mental disease were established. Mental hygiene has been widely linked with the negative aspect of social exclusion, as seen in the persecution of the mentally disabled under the Nazi regime. However, it is a little known fact that the science of mental hygiene also aimed to increase mental productivity through preventive measures. In England, during the period in question, psychiatrists promoted programs for the "early treatment of mental diseases". "Early treatment" here specifically refers to the establishment of more accessible psychiatric facilities on an outpatient basis and a voluntary admission system, both of which were expected to encourage more people to use psychiatric services. In terms of the published discourse surrounding the subject of "early treatment", the author argues that books and articles were written and disseminated not only to maintain mental health for the sake of national productivity, but also to serve and strengthen the professional interests of psychiatrists, who had been forced to work under competitive market conditions due to the 1890 Lunacy Act. In this latter sense, the subject of mental hygiene became a verbal instrument for protecting the rights of members of the profession to earn a living.

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Due to continuing tax increases during the Russo-Japanese War, postwar regional society became faced with the serious problem of increased tax burdens. This article takes up strata of powerful local figures at the time, which have been dealt with in almost all of the research to date in the context of regional improvement movement and the expansion of political parties, shedding new light on their relationship to the local taxation system. The author offers Saitama Prefectures as a typical example of where large increases occurred in the income tax and points to a little known tax institution, the Income Investigation Commission (IIC; Shotoku Chosa Iinkai 所得調査委員会), which was involved in calculating individual income tax amounts and whose members were chosen by taxpayers in local elections. The article begins with a quantitative study to determine the place of income taxes within the context of regional society, showing how both tax revenue and the number of taxpayers increased during the War and how after the War social strata with vested interests in the question of taxation greatly expanded. As to the process of choosing members of the IIC, elections were held mainly county by county (gun 郡), while candidates and the distribution of posts were controlled by local leaders under non-competitive conditions. Elected members tended to be holders of important local offices, such as village headman, and were involved in local improvement projects in collaboration with national policy. However, in 1909, members of the IIC clashed with the Department of Tax Affairs, demanding a decrease in the income tax burdens of local residents. Saitama IIC members filed complaints with higher authorities and were supported by village headmen. Despite the refusal to meet their demands, the following year they lobbied the National Diet and both political parties to pass legislation, in a non-partisan spirit that also marked the movement to lower land taxes. The author concludes that the power elite in post-Russo-Japanese War regional society came to possess a dual character: one complacently conducting projects along the policy lines of central bureaucratic agencies; the other in conflict with how the national tax revenue authority was dealing with regional society.

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