This article attempts to clarify the ideas about an educational system held by Tanaka Fujimaro, vice-minister of education, who introduced school reforms during the early Meiji Period, in order to show that the foundations of educational administration in modern Japan were built upon the Education Act of 1879, which was formulated through Tanaka's involvement from draft proposal to the passage of the bill. The research to date has been unable to deal with the question of Tanaka's ideas about educational institutions and intentions concerning educational legislation, due to the complete absence of source materials on these subjects. However, the author of this article, utilizing a collection of articles on education found in the National Diet Library's Hosokawa Junjiro Collection, has been able to trace Tanaka's ideas and legislative activities in the following manner. Although the early Meiji Period government did set up a Ministry of Education entrusted with the administrative task of educating and training the nation, the Ministry lacked any fixed ideals or methodology about how to realized such a goal. It was Tanaka Fujimaro who first set about responding to the Ministry's mandate, beginning with the application of his observations of institutions in Europe and the United States as a member of the Iwakura Mission to what he considered appropriate to the task of administering educational affairs in Japan, summarized in his "Draft Proposal of an Education Bill". The Draft Proposal, which covered the realms of school, society and the household, aimed to transform general education into the major task of government, based on academic and educational freedom. Although Tanaka met with resistance concerning his idea of legislative bureaus for organizing human resource development and local autonomy, he was able to convince his opponents as to their significance. The Draft also addressed the questions of local autonomy and fiscal difficulties in the name of the establishment of educational administration. Furthermore, as deliberation on the Draft began in the Chamber of Elders, Tanaka took advantage of the legislative revision committee system to guide the Draft through the process of compromise and improvement, resulting in the preparation of a set of provisions indispensable to educational affairs, which upon their passage into law determined the future of administration from that time on.

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Within the recent research done on the Japanese medieval state, a debate has arisen over how to evaluate the Kamakura Bakufu in contrast to the imperial court in Kyoto. If we try to relocate the problem somewhat differently, we end up fundamentally focusing on the question of what is the meaning of "state" in medieval Japan. The present article focuses on contemporary ideology and extraordinary events from the analytical perspective of the relativization of the modern nation-state, in order to trace indicators and characteristic features of the "state" within the Japanese medieval world, within the context of the time-space continuum of premodern East Asia. In concrete terms, the author takes up the political ideology of correlating divine will with human action (tenjin 天人) in connection with extraordinary events, a set of beliefs which originated in China then spread throughout the regions on its periphery, as the ideology developed in Kyoto aristocratic society during the early medieval period, which is a given factor when trying to place the Kamakura Bakufu within context of the state at that time. This tenjin ideology involved understanding the origins of extraordinary events, both favorable and disastrous, as stemming from divine judgement towards corresponding good or bad political governance. What the author terms the "tenjin correlation" can therefore be identified as the fundamental necessary condition for aristocratic organizations responsible for political action and therefore for those political entities of the premodern East Asian world which we conceptualize as "states". Although the research to date has tended to undervalue and de-emphasize the importance of the "tenjin correlation" in the workings of the imperial court in early medieval Kyoto, the author is able to verify the continuing existence of an ideology of causality based on the "tenjin correlation," in particular with respect to extraordinary natural phenomena. That is to say, the idea of such phenomena as crucial events being a characteristic feature of the medieval world is the key to evaluating the early medieval Kyoto imperial court as a "state" within the time-space continuum of premodern East Asia. On the basis of such ideology, the various political responses that were selected and implemented on the occasion of extraordinary natural events can be understood structurally as composed of invocation (exorcism) and public acts of benevolence. The author concludes that the medieval Japanese "state" model can be understood in terms of extraordinary natural events, etc. being ultimately judged as divine punishment for immoral, mistaken political governance on the part of the ruler, and also as a political entity composed of rulers and their counselors responding to the will of heaven with two kinds of human action, acts of expiation and public displays of benevolence. It is within this context that the situation of the Kamakura Bakufu and medieval social structure should be placed.

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