In September 1890 the Daidokurabu, Saikojiyuto, Aikokukoto and the Kyushudoshikai together re-formed the Jiyuto in order to participate in Diet politics. Two months later, Jiyuto members sat in the First Imperial Diet. Jiyuto Diet representatives were determined as was the government, that this inaugural Asian parliament should not end in failure. This determination had been apparent even before the inauguration of the Diet, during the process of deciding Jiyuto policy towards the Diet. Furthermore, this determination was not the sole preserve of the 'traitorous' Aikokukoto group led bj Itagaki Taisuke, but rather enveloped all the Jiyuto Diet members. In this sense, it can be said that the compromise between the government and the Jiyuto which emerged during the first Diet was inevitable. It was precisely because of the tacit agreement with in the party to compromise with the government that Itagaki, who had preciously instigated the 'betrayal' was elected as party president, and this same action also allowed the Jiyukurabu -the 'traitors' who had left the party -to return peacefully to the Jiyuto within a short time. It can be seen from this that the cause of the 'betrayal' did not lie simply in the bribe received from the government. What sort of faction structure emerged in the Jiyuto during the first Diet? Which of the four original groups a Jiyuto Diet representative had belonged to was certainly one determinant of faction membership. This was particularly the case with the Aikokukoto group. However, that was not the only factor involved. In general, the factions seem to have been very fluid. The development of these factions will be the subject of a future paper.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics and functions of ri (里, provincial administrative units of fifty households) unit under the ritsu-ryo system by a comparison with the village system of Tang China. The village system in Tang China consisted of administrative (artificial) units (xiang 郷 and li 里) and natural ones (fang 坊 and cun 村). But when we observe this system functioned in reality, we can see that the number of the households in the administrative units was not very strict, that li and cun were connected to each other by xiang, and that in a xiang the lizheng (里正, administrators of a li) played a very important role, being responsible for presenting shoushi (手実, statesments -declaration of information for household registers) and enforcing the equal field system (均田制). In Japan, however, natural units were not adopted as in Tang China, there were only administrative units, bo (坊) in the capital and ri (里) in all other areas. Besides, the characteristics of ri itself were considerably different from those in Tang China. In the first place, it is worthy of our notice that the official authority of the richo (里長, administrators of ri in Japan) for presenting shujitsu (手実) and enforcing the handen-system (班田制, Japanese land allotment system) was much weaker than that of the Tang. This fact had a great deal to do with the existence of gunji (郡司, administrators of provincial sub-divisions called gun 郡). In the second place, unlike in Tang China, the ri in Japan also acted as a financial unit, for example, with regard to shicho (仕丁) or fuko (封戸). This function decided a organizationed principle of ri in Japan. With such functions, ri units were organized mainly in order to maintain a standard number of kako (課口, taxable individuals) in each ri, and furthermore, to equalize the number in each kako. And an analysis of existing household registers in ancient Japan shows that this policy was realized to a considerable extent until the go-ri system was abolished in 740. In this sense, the aims organizing ri units were (1) to enable the tax collection system under the ritsu-ryo system to work smoothly (2) to use the number of ri (=the number of hako) to control quantitatively the areas ruled by gunji. In conclusion, it may be said that in Japan ri units were far more artificial and political in nature than in Tang China.

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With the intention of examining the vicissitudes of the Muromachi shogun's immediate direction of legal and administrative affairs, the author undertakes a textual criticism of one single, incomplete, and newly located register (hikitsuke 引付) of the shogun's direct judgement or approval (gozen-sata 御前沙汰). This register, entitled ukagaigoto kiroku, was recorded during the 2nd year of Entoku, or 1490, by SEI Motosada 清元定, a bugyonin 奉行人 or one of the shogun's executive officers. Only six and half leaves of the original remain in the Tenri Central Library ; their reverse sides consist of scattered parts of two of nine scrolls of the holograph diary of YOSHIDA Kanemigi 吉田兼右 for the years 1533-1534. Upon comparison with two already known records of the same title, from 1490 and around the 1540s, and other related materials, the author clarifies that the records under this title were made by the officials in charge who submitted matters for the shogun's approval (ukagaigoto), each official compiling records of the matters he personally dealt with : theoretically all these officials kept such kind of partial records for their own use. Furthermore, the author contends, with evidence from some entries for the year 1539, from the diary of ODACHI Joko 大館常興, one of the shogun's consultants (naidansu 内談衆), that in addition to these particular records, an official annual general collection of the duplicate registers was compiled by the bakufu under the same title, covering all matters brought up for consultation during the year. Such a collection, however, has not been located thus far, while the extant texts are limited to the sporadic records made and preserved by such bugyonin as INO Mototsura 飯尾元連 (alias Sosho 宗勝), his grandson INO Takatsura 堯連 and SUWA Sadamichi 諏訪貞通, the officials in charge, who added their signatures at the end of the line in which the date was written on a given document. The author concludes that these findings will help us to understand that the gozen-sata procedure, once conducted primarily in the presence of the shogun, was changing at the end of the 15th century into one conducted without the presence of the shogun.

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