The purpose of this paper is to show how the "Rokken" (pension bond) policy dependent upon the foreign loan was proposed and decided informally to be introduced, and how the loan was designed to be floated in America, to abolish the hereditary stipend, which has not yet been fully considered. The conclusions of this study are as follows. 1. The design of abolishing the hereditary stipend by the "Rokken" policy had already become a dominant opinion among the officials of the Ministry of Finance before "Haihan-Chiken" (the abolition of feudal clans and the establishment of prefectures). After that the necessity grew pressing to put the "Rokken" policy into practice for the completion of "Hai-han-Chiken", but the "Rokken" policy could not be easily carried out right away because of the 'dispute' over what was to be done first concerning "Shizoku" (pre-Samurai). But the situation was changed then the Iwakura mission was planned. In other words, the "Rokken" policy wasto be put into practice as one of the most important policies when it was finally decided for T. Okubo to join the mission mainly by getting Inoue's approval of it through the realization of one of his requests, viz. T. Saigo's promise to co-operate with such officials as K. Inoue, S. Okuma for the completion of "Haihan-Chiken". 2. Inoue and Okuma tried to avoid the deliberation of "Sain" (左院, a kind of legislative organization) and preferred to that of "Uin" (右院, an annual meeting of ministers) so as to get the approval of the "Rokken" policy by "Seiin "(正院, a kernel of government), and offered Saigo the replenishment of police by Kagoshima-Shizoku to maintain his support. Without this offer in addition to his promise, Saigo would not have approved such a severe policy, which is cleared by the newly discovered materials. 3. At first Inoue and K. Yoshida planned to float a new external loan in America to avoid the bad influence by the former external loan the documents of which were prepared by H. N. Lay and treated as notarial deed in spite of its being fraudulent. At the same time they had a strong criticism against the former loan because it had very inferior conditions. 4. After all Yoshida made up his mind to visit Europe to float a new loan because in these days America had not the adequate market for the capital-export in the form of foreign loan and was confronted with the stringency of money. He did so before the publication of A. Mori's objection, according to the proposal of Shiff in Frankfurt introduced by DeLong.

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Problems of local control by the central government in the early stage of the Meiji Period still remain unclear. This paper discusses a period from the establishment of the Meiji government to the abolition of feudal domains and establishment of prefectures to elucidate details of local government and relations between problems of local rule and the political process of the new government. Firstly, this paper specifically covers matters which have been rarely discussed, such as functions of the Ministry of Home Affairs (民部官) and the role of the Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, Saneomi Hirosawa (広沢真臣), and describes how government agencies for local rule were set up in the initial stage of the Meiji Period, and other particular aspects of the agencies. The ministry's measures for ruling prefectures derived from an idea of Saneomi Hirosawa, who strove to establish a prefectural government in Kyoto. In explaining the character of these measures, this paper makes it clear that the measures included enlightened spects while promoting centralized rule. As examples, the ministry's establishment of prefectural assemblies and its administrative inspectors sent to local governments are cited. Secondly, this paper describes difficulties in local rule by the new government under pressure from Europe and the United States and intra-government conflicts over local rule. It is pointed out that Saneomi Hirosawa's idea played an important role in the separation, especially the separation of the Home Affairs Ministry from the Finance Ministry in July 1870. Furthermore, it is explain that behind separation there were intra-governmental conflicts over local rule and criticism by local administrators against the two ministries. Thirdly, this paper touches upon the role that problems of local rule played in the abolition of feudal domains and establishment of prefectures in 1871, and other reforms before and after that. It explains that Toshimichi Okubo (大久保利通), who took the initiative in the 1871 reforms, intended to curb the considerable influence of the Finance Ministry for a stable Government while strengthening the authority of the Imperial Court. The basic political course of the new Meiji government was centralization under financial pressure. Based on the analysis in this paper, however, I believe the government's internal confusion, caused by problems of local rule and subsequent reforms of government agencies, characterize the new Meiji regime during its process of establishment.

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In this article, I try to investigate how the judicial system was formed in the conflict regarding differing constitutional conceptions between the Meiji government and Jiyu-Minken Movement from the late 1870's to the 1880's. I examine the judicial reforms in 1876·77 and the debate about this in the Genro-In (Senate) in order to investigate the formation of judicial system.
The Meiji government tried to gain the people's confidence in the authority of the courts and carry out smoothly the policies of Tiso-Kaisei (the Land Tax Reform) and that of enhancing the wealth and military strength of Japan by the separation of justice and administrative business through the establishment of District Court in September 1876. However this separation was incomplete because the Inner Cabinet (Naikaku) administered arbitrarily the affairs of state on the whole that is, it intensified the right of the Minister of Justice to intervene in trials in 1876·77 placing the courts under the Inner Cabinet's control. This could have brought about the loss of the people's confidence in the judgements given by such courts and have made the people's disapproval of the policies change into the disapproval of the existing structure.
This problem was pointed out by the debate of Genro-In in 1877. It insisted on solidifying the position of the judiciary through the shared control between the three branches of government. This insistance involved two constitutional conceptions in opposition. One of these was the conception which would allow for direct government by the Emperor (Tenno). The other was the constitutional formation which would solidify the judiciary by ensuring that it was the means which would secure the rule of law.
Considering the above-mentioned facts, we can get a clue to the problem how the judicial system under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan was chosen from the various choices in the 1880's.

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