With the Reichsversicherungsordnung in 1911 the German Workers' Insurance was codified into a single system of law. But its significance was more than a merely formal codification of the existing laws of Workers' Insurance. Bismarck's Workers' Insurance was carried out by individual corporations, each sector of which was introduced, one after another, with different formative principles and different forms of administration and management. Therefore it has been suggested since the 1890s that each of sector insurance should be organically combined. In 1903, the Reichstag officially adopted a resolution for the unification of the three existing sectors of the Workers' Insurance, thus creating a single law. After this resolution, the Reich-government also began to draw up a bill of unified social insurance, namely the Reichsversicherungsordnung. A completely unified system of social insurance was the goal of this plan, in which a single organ would cover all sectors of social insurance. This plan seeked to rationalize the insurance; organic divisions according to enterprise or type of industy were to be abolished, and the insurance was to be re-systematized into a relatively large regional unit. But this new plan faced the fierce opposition of industry, which was interested in maintaining the existing institution intact. The new plan could not be realized without revisions. The 7feic/i-government then tried to establish a Regional Insurance Board (Versicherungsamt), which would cover all three insurance sectors and thereby would contribute to the unification of the system. In addition the Board would be given responsibility for making decisions about the administration and management of insurance: superintendence and arbitration also would become the Board's domain. It was intended that the Board would overcome the partisanship of the existing individual organs of the Insurance and that it would integrate the Insurance system into a nationwide political framework. Although this plan also met with stubborn opposition and certain concession was not to avoid, the Reich-government implemented this plan. There existed a peculiar logic from the standpoint of government that rose above individual interests. The wilful government tried to fill a particular role as a coordinator and to induct the nation comprehensively into the Social Insurance system. The Reichsversicherungsordnung thus came into existence as the outset of that the state purposefully took the social security of the nation as a part of its inherent function, not only as a tool of keeping the existing state order or repressing the Social Democrats. The framework of this system thus introduced the basis of German Social Insurance and the bud of the development of Sozialstaat in the following period.

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As the days of high economic growth started, the locations of heavy and chemical industries concentrated on developed industrial zones in coastal areas which had been equipped with industrial infrastructures. As a result, serious problems were caused. One is the regional disparity like income gap, over-urbanization, depopulation of rural areas, and so forth. Other is the shortage of industrial site, water, labor in developed industrial areas. To solve these problems, the government introduced "New Industrialize Area Project" as the first regional development policy based on the synthetic national land planning in Japan. New Industrialize Area Project, to narrow the regional disparity, aimed to invite the growing industries to "Industrialize Area" strategically, through providing large-scale infrastructures as inexpensive as possible. The Project was realized in the context of various interests among the central government, the local governments, the enterprises. This paper discusses how the parties concerned -paying special attention to the local governments-adjust their interests, and what position they took in the process of the Project. Since the regional disparity had been very serious problem, most of the local governments especially in backward regions would take part in New Industrialize Area Project actively. Though the local government's plan was restricted by the national land planning and the private investment plan, the local governments negotiated with the central government about increase of the Industrialize Areas, the subsidies, the strategic industries, and they tried to get the most advantages they could. Their positive attitude led to keen competition for designation as the Industrialize Areas, invitation of the heavy and chemical industries, and it was just the power to push forward with the Project. The petroleum-based industries and the steel industry which most of the areas had desired to invite, located in only a few favorable areas, but, the other areas also succeeded in attracting various industries which was the labor-intensive industries like the machine industry, the light industries, and the regional disparity was getting narrow gradually. Thus, the regional development policy which have provided large-scale and inexpensive infrastructure making use of the regional gap, was appropriate policy in the middle of the high economic growth.

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This article clarifies the changing structure of landownership in the central district of prewar Osaka. It has been argued that landownership is an important issue in the study of Japanese economic history. In this field, existing studies mainly focus on prewar rural landownership or postwar urban landownership. Thus, there are few studies on urban landownership of prewar Japan to date. The article takes a different point of view for three reasons. First, urban landownership follows sequential process from the Meiji period to the present due to the lack of an urban land reform during the Occupation. Second, many urban land laws are derived from prewar ones. Finally, for the study of Japanese urban economic history, it is important to consider various aspects related to the establishment of capitalism in Japan. The new findings presented here have been derived from a complete survey of the land registry of the central district of Osaka. The survey deals with all the landowners of this area from the records for 1911 and 1940, and shows that several types of landowners had different roles in the structure change of landownership. At the beginning of Meiji, most of the landowners in this area were of the merchant class of the Edo period. With the development of capitalism, large firms gradually dominated the landownership. It is also demonstrated that a particular city planning had a strong influence on this process.

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