The aim of this article is to shed light upon the operations of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, which was organized into a "mega-ministry" through a merger with the Ministry of Civil Affairs on 11 September 1871, and its influence within the Meiji government, focusing on its policy planning and decision making processes. After its merger with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which was orchestrated by then Civil Affairs Minister Inoue Kaoru, the new Mega-Ministry of Finance assumed both grave and broad ranging authority in the country's fiscal and domestic non-military administrative affairs. It was Inoue's right-hand man, industrialist Shibusawa Eiichi, who took on the task of putting the policy planning and decision making institutions in place and setting up the General Affairs Bureau to deal with policy planning. With full support from the Ministry's top officials, the General Affairs Bureau was placed in the role of coordinating and balancing the interests of its other bureaus and departments. With respect to decision making, administrative procedures were drawn up to clarify the process, including decision deadlines and obligatory seals of approval on all policy proposals in circulation, which resulted in both a speedier and more substantive process. Also, in order to cut through the red tape plaguing the Ministry, Shibusawa took on the task of the reforming the Ministry of State's (Dajokan) Privy Council Chamber by transplanting the General Affairs Bureau, as the Ministry's "puppet," into the Chamber both institutionally and staff-wise, in order to speed up and streamline its clerical tasks. Consequently, during May 1873 the Privy Council Chamber was infused with the policy planning and decision making know-how of the Ministry of Finance through its annexation of the Ministry's General Affairs Bureau operations and personnel.

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The large body of research literature that has accumulated to date on the direct landholdings (kurairi-chi 蔵入地) of the Toyotomi Hideyoshi regime, which formed its power base, has run the gamut from identifying the locations of those holdings to the role they played in funding Hideyoshi's military forays into the Korean Peninsula. The present article attempts to reexamine this research by focusing on the means by which the regime's leaders who administered kurairi-chi went about settling accounts related to it, and in so doing describe in substantive terms such aspects as the regime's internal structure and the remission of rice (kuramai 蔵米) harvested from its landholdings. The author begins with a review of the various fiscal documents related to kurairi-chi; namely, kirifu 切符, uketori-jo 請取状 and kaisai-jo 皆済状 Kirifu was a document drawn up to indicate how kuramai was to be used, addressed to the manager of a kurairi-chi holding and specifying to whom the rice was to be allotted, while uketori-jo was a certificate of receipt for rice remitted to the regime in the form of cash. Kaisai-jo, which was issued in the settlement of accounts and whose function was assumed in 1590 by the sanyo-jo 算用状, recorded the information contained in the kirifu (allotment) and uketori-jo (receipt) related to any transaction. From these documents and the parts of them written directly by Hideyoshi himself, the author concludes that it was Hideyoshi who held the ultimate authority over the regime's expenditures of rice and cash, as well as the determination of tax exemptions (rates) on kurairi-chi holdings, while his functionaries were charged only with settling related accounts. Next the author turns to changes that occurred in the personnel handling the settlement of accounts, beginning with Ito Yozaemon, a Toyotomi retainer with a commercial background, but later reverting to regime functionaries, called Sanyo Bugyo 算用奉行. The staff first consisted of two members, Nakatsuka Masaie and Mashita Nagamori, to whom Asano Nagayoshi and Maeda Gen'i were added. A document dating back to Asano's removal from office in 1595 verifies the office of Sanyo Bugyo as an important administrative group within the regime. Later Ishida Mitsunari would join the staff, then after Hideyoshi's death, the office's duties were incorporated into the Go-bugyo 五奉行 (Five Deputies) system. Finally, following the Battle of Sekigahara, Katagiri Katsumoto and Koide Hidemasa took over the settlement of accounts. Most of the revenue received from kurairi-chi was spent locally, while the portion remitted to the central government was transferred in gold and silver. However, the kurairi-chi managers were almost always late in their submission of copies of tax exemption (rate) lists (men-mokuroku 免目録) and sanyo-jo, to the extent of being fined by the regime for negligence. In light of such a situation, the author concludes that despite the fact that a system of account settlement was firmly put in place within the Toyotomi administrative bureaucracy, the regime was still not able to gain complete managerial control over its kurairi-chi.

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On 17 February 1800, the Consulat enacted a law concerning the districting and administration of the entire territory of France, and embarked on fundamental reforms that would lead to the encouragement and reinforcement of the centralization of local administrative institutions. However, the law also reintroduced the commune system, thus reviving local autonomy, a fact which has long been neglected. Once noticed, this fact leads to the question of why the regime of Napoleon, which has been considered to be a centralized one, needed to reorganize certain structural features of local autonomous institutions. In order to answer this question, the author of this article examines the structure of local governance under Napoleon by focusing on the town mayors who represented both the communes and central state authority in the prefectures of the Hautes-Pyrenees. The mayors of rural towns and cities who served under Napoleon have long been criticized for being "incompetent" and in league with their constituents, problems that were fully recognized by contemporary governors of prefectures and arrondissements (prefects and vice-prefects), as well as by the central government. Therefore, the prefectures proposed that any canton larger in area than a commune should have one paid mayor; however, the central government ignored this proposal and persisted in maintaining the commune system. This means that the government regarded the appointment of mayors based on the commune system as the best way to rule at the local level. Such a conclusion leads to the question of how the mayors, who were so important in terms of local rule, were actually chosen. To answer this question, the author first turns to an examination of the available mayoral prosopography and finds that there were definite differences in social status between the mayors of canton administrative centers (chef-lieu) and those of ordinary communes. Moreover, regarding the actual administration of local authorities, we find unique solutions adopted by prefecture-level bureaus to deal with problems caused by the mayors of rural towns and cities. Despite obvious regional differences, in the economic and cultural periphery of the Pyrenees, administrative affairs of the greatest import were carried on at the canton level. Rather than this fact indicating that the commune system was being treated as a mere formality, we find mayors of chef-lieu, who were selected from the ranks of local dignitaries, utilizing their political influence to guide politicians of inferior status and power in their duties as mayors of ordinary communes. In this sense, the commune system should be considered as having been introduced into a highly centralized, socially stratified political order for the purpose of integrating political power and influence at the regional level.

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