This article is part of the recent research focusing on the period of military buildup in Japan following the Russo-Japanese War, by taking up the case of the town of Takada-Cho（the present day city of Joetsu）in Niigata Prefecture, which would become the home of the Imperial Army’s 13th Division, after the town attracted the unit by donating the land for an encampment, in an attempt to build a community compatible with the military, that ended up causing only local political and fiscal trouble.
　The author begins by tracing the process by which the difficulties were created, pointing first to １）the town’s excessive accumulation of debt in order to purchase the land for the camp and ２）its involvement in political squabbles between the Seiyukai Party and its rival parties, which resulting in the resignation of the town's mayor, a member of a rival party who played the leading role in first inviting the 13th Division. In addition, the town was forced to expand and rebuild an elementary school, bringing it to the verge of fiscal collapse, which was narrowly avoided by the Ministry of the Army paying part of the cost and refinan-cing a loan into long-term debt securities, the redemption of which proved ruinous, forcing the town to raise both household and income taxes on lower-income families and resident military officers.
　The author then turns to the multiple aspects of the town efforts to coexist with the 13th Division, including having to extend the local railroad depot, provide housing for military officers, construct a slaughterhouse, and a bear the burden of a controversial project to improve and maintain roads to accommodate military maneuvers, all in addition to the above-mentioned fiscal difficulties. After the publicly licensed brothels in the gay quarter of the town center were relocated to the suburbs, private brothels decided to stay put. Although the largest urban infra-structure desired by both the 13th Division and the town was the construction of an improved water supply system, that project did not get underway until the 1920s, when the long-term debt incurred for the initial land purchase was finally paid.

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This article utilizes new source materials related to political scientist and Tokyo Imperial University professor Yabe Teiji（1902‐1967）to examine the similarities and differences between his concepts of communal democracy（kyodotaiteki shuminsei 共同体的衆民政; Ger. Gemeinschaftlich Demokratie）and cooperative democracy （kyodo-minshushugi 協同民主主義）, in order to first clarify continuity and change in Yabe’s thought along the historical spectrum of prewar-wartime and postwar Japan（a two phase process based on self-criticism just before Japan’s defeat）, then using those findings to reexamine Yabe’s well-known proposal for amending the Meiji Constitution and his arguments regarding the abdication of the emperor.
　Yabe’s ideas regarding democracy, which approached the political philosophy of university colleague Nanbara Shigeru（1889‐1974）, found its essence in the “freedom of ancient Greece”, in an attempt to overcome the structural issue of communal democracy causing a descent into totalitarianism. However, that prewar assumption could not be easily resurrected during wartime. The rise of cooperative democracy would, in Yabe’s view, be the sublation of prewar liberal democracy and communal pluralism, in the form of cooperativism, by which the people would participate in autonomous governance through regional cooperative organizations, aiming at building a national community founded upon both individual liberty and the public interest.
　Adopting the arguments of jurist and father of the trending field of national polity（kokutai 国体）studies Satomi Kishio（1897‐1974）, Yabe's ideas regarding the national polity morphed from the concept of one monarch ruling over a nation of subjects（ikkun banmin 一君万民）to an amalgamation of the monarchy and the people（kunmin ittai 君民一体）, thus sublating the ideas of controversial constitutional scholar Minobe Tatsukichi（1873‐1948）, which had influenced Yabe in prewar times, and becoming the nucleus of his new stance, the substance of which would take form in due course. Learning from his role in Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro’s failed New National Consensus Movement of 1940‐41, Yabe aimed at conceptualizing a national polity incorporating democratic ideas, thus presenting a discourse critical of positions taken in both the prewar and wartime eras.
　The tangible result of this newly revised fundamental norm was Yabe’s proposal for constitutional reform, embodied in the idea of the emperor as the “symbol” of the nation, while at the same time placed in the position of a pro forma overseer of national governance, a combination somewhat at odds with a National Constitution clearly declaring the sovereignty of the people. Nevertheless, the aim was to inject ideals similar to the British parliamentary system under a constitutional monarch, based on the grand assumption that the emperor would see the political light and voluntarily abdicate the throne.
　The author concludes that “cooperative democracy” was the key to Yabe criticizing and revitalizing his own political science, which was facing dire straits as the result of Japan's defeat. In this sense, Yabe’s conceptual transformation from “communal democracy” to “cooperative democracy” was a defeat-induced intellectual change of heart triggered by both necessity and spontaneity.

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This article deals with two cholera outbreaks in Izmir in the late 19th and early 20th century, in order to examine from both a theoretical and practical perspective how modern Ottoman cities attempted to control epidemics, including the acceptance of new scientific knowledge regarding bacteriology and the causes of disease and the impact of such knowledge on controlling the actual epidemic. Focusing on civilian doctors who played a leading role in the fight against cholera, the author examines how provincial cities were integrated into the health policy of the modern Ottoman Empire.
　After the establishment of the Imperial Bacteriological Institute in Istanbul, the 1910‐11 cholera outbreak in Izmir was combated with a new set of measures, including interruption of the water supply and strict isolation of patients, steps quite different from those adopted during the 1893 epidemic. Moreover, the understanding that it was a physiological environment suitable to the growth of cholera pathogens in the human body that was essential to the spread of the disease gave new meaning to the mea-sures implemented during previous epidemics, in the sense of “preventing the growth of pathogens”. In other words, changes in preventive measures were accompanied by previous measures understood within a reorganized etiological framework.
　In provincial cities like Izmir, these preventive measures were proposed by graduates of the Civilian Medical School in Istanbul （est., 1867）, who were then appointed as health officials in their hometowns throughout the empire and served as the agents of the Empire’s health policy. They not only led the fight against cholera, but also became involved in educating the public about every-day individual and household health practices through articles in the newspapers and magazines that were developing rapidly at that time. Such activities played an important role in making the Ottoman Empire’s national health policy more relevant to the citizens of its provincial cities.

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