The first revision of the "National Defense Plan" in 1918 has not been analyzed sufficiently mainly due to lack of historical materials. This paper intends to make a comparative study of the Army's and the Navy's original plans by using new materials from the HAMAOMOTE Matasuke Papers and TAKESHITA Isamu Papers. First of all, we must understand why the Army and the Navy were able to agree to revise the National Defense Plan that affected their individual basic war plans, despite their sharp opposition on matters regarding the arms budget. Therefore, the first part of this paper examines the process of the dissolution of the arms budget problem in the second OKUMA Shigenobu cabinet that was shocked by the outbreak of the First World War. The First World War made the military even more aware of the importance of Chinese raw materials. At that time, Japan's support for the third Chinese revolution to destroy Yuan Shih-kai's monarchy added momentum to Japanese hopes for a stronger foothold in China. The Army was now joined by the Navy in urging a stronger military policy with respect to China. Therefore, it was the Chinese problem that initiated the first revision of the "National Defense Plan". When the plan was originally made in 1907, the Navy had refused to include provisions for war operations in China, because it feared that the Navy would then be made secondary to the Army. But due to the internal and external changes produced by the First World War, the Navy now accepted the stipulations to for operations in China. Although originally the Army and Navy had different opinions as what nation presented the strongest military threat, Russia or America, now their respective plans offered the possibility of joining together with the China-plan as a bridge. The appearance of this common target together with the internal political structural demands for the banding together of the Army and the Navy, made the first revision of the National Defense Plan possible.

View full abstract

The Tax Ledger of the Northern Customhouse at Hyogo (The Hyogo-no-Kitaseki Nyusen-Nocho 兵庫北関入船納帳) dated Bun'an (文安) 2 (1445), documents contained in the archives of the University of Tokyo Department of Literature (Tokyo Daigaku Bungaku-bu 東京大学文学部) and in the personal historical source collection of Tatsusaburo Hayashiya (林屋辰三郎), are ledgers recording tax income received from ships entering the Northern Customhouse at Hyogo, which was under the proprietorship of the Buddhist tomplex of Todai-ji (東大寺). There is one additional ledger which is well known to have been preserved at Todai-ji itself. As opposed to the former ledgers, which record assessments based on a fixed percentage of total tonnage or total freight value, the Todai-ji ledger records fixed assessments per vessel irregardless of freight tonnage on board. Both of these tax ledgers are documents which follow the precedent set one hundred and forty years earlier, when royal family head Fushimi Joko (伏見上皇) commended to Todai-ji in Enkyo (延慶) 1 (1308) the Hyogo Customhouse management (Hyogo-no-seki Shomai and Okiishi 兵庫関升米・置石) rights, which included the imposition of a freight tax of 1% and donation of Stone for repair of the docking facilities. In other words, the ledgers found at the University of Tokyo and the Hayashiya collection (In former days, these Ledgers remained in the Todai-ji archives) record the imposition of this 1% freight tax, and the ledger handed down within Todai-ji contains assessments (already monetized at the time of commendation) of forty-five mon (文) per vessel to pay for the attainment of repair-use stone. Despite the fact that Todai-ji held proprietary rights to manage the Northern Customhouse at Hyogo for over two hundred years, we have been able to locate only the ledgers of Bun'an 2. The reason for this lack of documentation probably lies in the fact that Todai-ji did not actually manage the customhouse directly, but rather continued to sub-contract the work of tax collection and repair to some entity outside of the temple complex. Records would therefore not tend to accumulate in the temple's archives. However, in the case of the Bun'an 2 ledgers, the sub-contractor handling the customhouse happened to be a monk assigned to the temple's lampoil warehouse (Aburakura 油倉) ; that is, the Hyogo customhouse, had by chance come under direct control of the temple during this particular year. It is in this way that the tax ledgers for that year remained in the Todai-ji archives.

View full abstract

The Li-nien chi, recently published in the Ch'ing-tai Ji-chi hui-ch'ao 清代日記〓抄 (Shanghai Jenmin Ch'u-Pan she 上海人民出版社 ed.), is a memoir written by Yao T'ing-lin (姚廷〓, 1628-1697?), a native of Shanghai. As Yao Yung-chi (姚永済), a brother of Yao T'ing-lin's grandfather, was a high-ranking official during the Late Ming, the Yao became one of the famous clans in Shanghai. After the Ming-Ch'ing transition, however, the Yao clan declined, and Yao T'ing-lin, no longer a member of the affluent local elite, was forced to earn his living by working at various jobs. The purpose of the present paper is to offer some findings gained through an analysis of miscellaneous entries in the Li-nien chi concerning such subjects as human relations, economic life and local administration. Though Yao Yung-chi's patronage and assistance greatly helped Yao T'ing-lin in his youth, that help was not based on a clan institutional organization for mutual aid among kinsmen, but on the personal sympathy which existed between Yung-chi and T'ing-lin. The lack of organizational power might have been one of the causes of the rapid decline of Yao clan. To earn a living, Yao T'ing-lin was engaged in various jobs throughout his life including work as a trader, managerial landlord, yamen clerk, independent farmer, and teacher. His choice of these jobs was based on a sharp sense of the advantages and disadvantages involved, although sometimes his expectations were not realized. Both the justice meted out by the courts and taxation levied by the Ch'ing local government directly influenced the lives of people in local society ; and when the local folk felt the expenses of lawsuits and tax-paying too burdensome, they relied on such personal measures as mediation on the part of relatives and friends or private arrangements with yamen clerks in order to protect themselves from ruin.

View full abstract