Scholars have scarcely dealt in suitable detail with the political structure and function of the Muromach Shogunate after the Onin-Bunmei War (1467-77). This essay clarifies the actual circumstances behind the 9th Shogun Yoshihisa's 義尚 decision making by means of gozen sata 御前沙汰 (direct judgement) and discusses its significance in connection with Bakufu politics. Until his expedition to Omi province in 1487 in order to surpress Rokkaku Takayori 六角高頼, a shugo who had ignored shogunal ordinances, Yoshihisa as shogun had had no political power. The ex-Shogun Yoshimasa 義政, his father, conducted Bakufu administration directly through his bugyoshu 奉行衆 (magistrates). Yoshihisa, however, stayed in Omi with his hokoshu 奉公衆 (immediate retainers) as well as the said bugyoshu for one year and half until his death due to illness. Yoshihisa's administrative and judicial decisions while in the battlefield were made by means of relying on consultation from his hyojoshu 評定衆 (councillors) selected from among his reliable entourage, instead of adopting his father's practice of presiding over the "magistrates". The newly established hyojoshu was different from the group of the same name once composed of hereditary bureaucrats (whose ancestors served the Kamakura Shogunate), and was composed of persons of different social background, free of tradition, and competent to become his advisors or even his surrogates. This fact suggests that Yoshihisa secured his power by relying on his own entourage and new councillors, thus reducing the influence of the "magistrates" then still entrusted by his father to the submission of advisory reports (iken 意見). Previous scholars have maintained that Yoshihisa's regime in Omi was initiated by the "immediate retainers". Indeed, the main body of the military force consisted of these retainers, and their services were vindicated by Yoshihisa, but the nuclear group of "councillors" was not necessarily composed of representatives of these "retainers". The expedition, judging from an examination of Inryoken Nichiroku 蔭凉軒日録 and other contemporary source materials, was positively intended by Yoshihisa himself to effect a separation from his father yoshimasa and his liege vassals, including "immediate retainers" and "magistrates", and to form his own system of decision making. The author concludes that (1)previous studies emphasized the voice and influence of the "magistrates (bugyoshu)" which grew larger in shogunal decision making after the Onin-Bunmei War, but the shogun's entourage (sokkinshu 側近衆) also played an important role in this procedure ; (2)the "councillors (hyojoshu)" newly established during the reign of Yoshihisa can be taken as the precursor of the "inner consultants (naidanshu 内談衆)", who would appear later during the reign of the 12th Shogun Yoshiharu 義晴.

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中世後期における地方武家の家伝・系譜伝承の形成過程について、安藤氏による「下国家譜」を例として検討を加えてみた。従来は、その成立時期が不明確であったために、かなり幅広く形成期を想定して、在地伝承などの形成と重なるものとして理解する意見が多かった。しかし、平川氏の問題提起を受けて、拙稿ではそれを検証しながら、成立時期が平川氏の想定よりも若干下る十五世紀中頃以降である可能性を指摘、その時代に安藤氏が置かれていた情勢の分析から、「下国家譜」に、長年にわたって抗争を続けていた南部氏を意識した津軽・秋田における先住権・支配権の主張という一面が認められること、さらには家譜編纂作業が、京都・羽賀寺と本拠を結ぶネットワーク上に想定する方が自然であることを指摘した。

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This paper concerns the Kawashima 革島 family which has been regarded in previous research as a Shoryoshu 小領主 (under-developed land proprietor), described as one of the organizers of Sengoku period ikki 一揆 (alliances for joint protest) which included jizamurai 地侍 (local magnates) and hyakusho 百姓 (free commoners). Shoryoshu are considered to have belonged neither perfectly to the bushi 武士 (warrior) classes nor completely to the common people, and therefore have been thought to have stood the "bushi" classes and the common people. In this article, the author tries to throw some light upon the conditions of the Kawashima family's attempt to accumulate, through purchase, various forms and scales of ownership over the lands scattered throughout the districts around its home region. This characteristic has been regarded as the main feature of shoryoshu in previous research. Here the author explains how the Kawashima family was able to protect its land ownership against tokusei ikki 徳政一揆 (an uprising by the people demanding return of land sold and dissolution of debts) and tokuseirei 徳政令 (an act by the Muromachi Bakufu 室町幕府 ordering the return of land sold and the dissolution of debts). To begin with, the author points out, through an analysis of Kawashima family held tochi baiken 土地売券 (land sale certificates), the fact that the land ownership of the family was protected by the Muromachi Bakufu, even during the promulgation of tokuseirei. Secondly, the soryo 惣領 (chief) of the family was a vassal of the Ise 伊勢 family, who occupied an important position in the Muromachi Bakufu government. One can easily see that this vassalage would be fairly convenient to the Kawashima family for assuring the protection of its land ownership by the Muromachi Bakufu. The author concludes, contrary to statements appearing in previous research, that the Kawashima family was not an under-developed land proprietor, but rather fully belonged to the "bushi" classes.

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The main purpose of this paper is to consider how shogunal authority was exercised in the Muromachi Bakufu by investigating the Bakufu administration which followed the Onin-Bunmei Wars (1467-77) and was headed by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshihisa 義尚 and former Shogun Yoshimasa 義政. It was in 1473 (Bunmei 文明5) that Yoshimasa abandoned the position of Seii Taishogun 征夷太将軍 and was succeeded by his young son Yoshihisa. In Bakufu political affairs the boy Shogun was represented by his maternal uncle, Hino Katsumitsu 日野勝光 and his mother Hino Tomiko 日野富子. Then during the years following 1483 (Bunmei 15) government affairs were carried out by both Yoshihisa and Yoshimasa. Up until now it has been thought that there was no particular division of authority between the two leaders ; however, after a re-investigation of the primary sources, the author has come upon some difierent conclusions. While it is true that Yoshimasa did abandon the title of Shogun in 1473, it does not follow that he retired from the Bakufu administration. It was necessary for him to carry out such duties as ceremonial affairs...affairs which the Hinos could not perform. Also, since Yoshihisa was not at all involved in Bakufu affairs, we can say that the Hino Family was acting not as regent for Yoshihisa but rather in the capacity as representatives of Yoshimasa. In other words, the Hino Family took over the duties of Kanrei 管領, a position which was vacant at the time. The Hino administration ended in 1482 (Bunmei 14) when Yoshimasa announced that from then on Yoshihisa was to take over personally Bakufu political affairs. After entrusting Yoshihisa with administrative responsibility, Yoshimasa continued for a time to participate in Bakufu affairs. The gradual transfer of authority began in 1483 with the handing over to Yoshihisa of judiciary responsibility in disputes over all proprietary rights (excluding Zen temples)...i.e., zasso-zata 雑訴沙汰...and over Bakufu financial administration (mandokoro-zata 政所沙汰). Shogunal leadership duties were transferred in 1486 ; and following the 1487 (Chokyo 長享1) campaign in Omi 近江, remaining authority was entrusted, which included Zen temple proprietorship judicial rights, authority to guarantee (ando 安堵) the proprietary rights of persons other that close direct vassals (kinshin 近臣), to appoint provincial law enforcement officials (shugo 守護) and to seal public documents (kojo kahan 公帖加判). Up until the final transfer of duties, shogunal authority took on the form of a division of labor between Yoshimasa and Yoshihisa, with the former holding sway in political power relations. If we consider the fact that Yoshihisa's administration actually began with the announcement of authority transfer in 1482, together with the fact that in the case of the third Muromachi Shogun, Yoshimitsu 義満, his son Yoshimochi 義持 and his grandson Yoshikazu 義量, while succeeding to the title of Shogun, held no real authority as long as Yoshimitsu was alive, we may be in a position to understand what the Muromachi Bakufu was actually aiming at. 1)The official appointment of Shogun by the Tenno (shogun senge 将軍宣下) was no more than a simple granting of eligibility for undertaking governmental duties ; so it was neccessary for the former Shogun to transfer authority in order for a new administration to begin. 2)This situation in which even following abandonment of the Shogunate, the retired Shogun would continue to administrate the Bakufu was a conscious refutation of the traditional shogunal image among the court aristocracy that since authority came with the office (shogun-shoku 将軍職), administration should begin from the time of succession. However, this refutation indicates that Muromachi shogunal authority was rather attained through the expansion of real political power and control.

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Meteorological observations have been made since 1881 by a weather station in Kyoto, Japan. Therefore, some approach must be considered to know about tempe ratures before 1881. This paper gives quantitative estimates of the monthly mean of the lowest daily temperature in winter in Kyoto.
A long record of dates Lake Suwa, in central Japan, 36°N138°E, 250km from Kyoto, was frozen has been found in the Suwa Shrine Documents by S. Fujiwara and collected by H. Arakawa.
A long record of dates of snowfalls was extracted by the author from many old diaries kept in Kyoto.
The dates Lake Suwa froze and the first and the last dates of snowfalls in Kyoto bet ween 1881 and 1953 are correlated with the monthly mean of the lowest daily temperature in winter observed in Kyoto. The correlations obtained are applied to estimate winter temperatures in Kyoto before 1881.
As a result, two series of winter temperatures are obtained: one deduced from the freezing dates and the other from the dates of snowfalls. The former covers 430 years (1450-1880) and the latter 880 years (1001-1880).
The two series give almost identical winter temperatures considering the error involved in the correlation used and the volume of available snowfalling data.
The sequence of the 50-year means of temperature obtained from the dates the lake was frozen shows that the mean lowest daily winter (December-March) temperature has been rising incrementally from-0.7°C in 1551 to-0.2°C in 1880.
The sequence of the 100-year means of temperature obtained from the dates of snowfalls shows that the mean of the lowest daily winter (December-March) temperature from the year 1101 to 1200 was higher by 0.8°C than one from the year 1001 to 1880.

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This article is an attempt to clarify the transformation that took place in military operations under the Muromachi shogunate after the violent protests for the remission of the debts that took place around Kyoto in 1441 (Kakitsu-no-Ran), from the time when the shogun's administrative advisors (kanrei) took control of the shogunate until Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa assumed leadership. Day to day military affairs during the "kanrei regime" were administered by Bakufu functionaries (bugyonin) and members of the kanrei's personal entourage (uchishu). However, in the midst of the political instability that followed the uprising, it became difficult to gain a consensus among the feudal lords (daimyo) and thus organize an allied army made up of troops led by provincial military governors (shugo). There-fore, regional conflicts that arose during this time would be pacified by local samurai (kokujin) from the nearby provinces coming to the support of the military governor of the province in question. In 1455, when Yoshimasa established firm control of the shogunate, the military system was reorganized mainly by Kanrei Hosokawa Katsumoto and the shogun's close advisor Ise Sadachika, meaning that in addition to the conventional "kanrei route" of reporting incidents to the shogun, a new route was established through Sadachika. However, between 1456 and 1461, the former route gave way to the latter, to the extent that the kanrei's position in military affairs became unclear, while Sadachika became Yoshimasa's advisor in military decision making and information reporting. During that time, troops under allied command of military governors were often deployed to quell regional conflicts, a widespread practice which caused mutiny among troops discontented over conscription, as local-based samurai were being conscripted repeatedly, to a degree of exhaustion. The period from the beginning of Yoshimasa's regime until 1460 was also a time marked by dysfunctionality in the Bakufu's system of military mobilization. It was for the purpose of correcting this problem that coercion was used to muster local-based samurai into service for the shogunate. Yoshimasa's efforts to pacify unruly provincial feudal lords, take back and directly manage proprietorships of religious institutions and mobilize local-based samurai met with failure, and he wound up faced with the rebellion of 1467 (Onin-no-Ran) without a solid military organization made up of those political forces. Yoshimasa's over-reliance on Sadachika had sorely weakened the military role of the kanrei in the Bakufu and caused its eventual hollowing out by the outbreak of the rebellion. The Hosokawa family was forced to conduct its functions as kanrei in isolation from the Bakufu's central bureaucracy. And although Yoshimasa was able to regain his control of the Bakufu through such extreme polarization and the efforts of Ise Sadamune, the Muromachi shogunate would never again play the leading role in conducting military operations.

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This study examines the ideas of ancient people about places for placenta rituals in Heijo-kyo, the 8th-century capital of Japan. The placenta is the material that comes out of a woman’s body after she gives birth to a baby, which is necessary to nourish and protect the baby in utero. Traditionally, the treatment of the placenta has been associated with the health and future of the baby, so there are many forms of related ceremonies around the world.

In Japan, placenta rituals took different forms in different periods. In many modern instances, the placenta was wrapped with paper or cloth and put in a pot, then buried underground in an auspicious direction. The pot contained, if the baby was a boy, a brush or an ink stick with his placenta. If the baby was a girl, there was a thread or a needle with her placenta.

Archaeologists have cited placenta rituals in folklore for their interpretations of pottery-buried remains. Many archaeologists have believed pottery was ritually buried around the front door of houses since in folklore, the placenta was frequently put in a pot and buried under the entrance of a house. But placentas were actually buried in various places apart from the front door; for example, in the shade, on mountains, by the roadside, in estates, under the floor, and in lavatories.

The oldest attested pottery-buried remains are found at the capital, Heijo-kyo. It is difficult to determine the purposes of burying earthenware during the Nara period. Yet two major purposes are for ground-purification ceremonies and for placenta rituals. So this paper first attempted to classify them by the kinds and the contents of the ritually buried pottery. The typical pottery used for placenta rituals is Sue ware jars called “Sueki tsubo A”, resembling a medicine pot that was associated with Yakushi or the Buddha of healing. The typical contents of the pottery are ink sticks, brushes and pieces of cloth.

The sites where pottery-buried remains were unearthed are large in size and near the Heijo Palace. This fact suggests that placenta ceremonies were carried out by government officials of the Heijo-kyo capital. And the sites of rituals were not always at entrances, but in many cases around the houses. According to ancient Chinese medical books, burying the placenta in the shade was taboo. But in modern folklore of Japan, the shade was often chosen as the place for burying the placenta, and many placentas were buried under the floors of houses.

In this respect, the sites where pottery-buried remains were unearthed in Heijo-kyo differ from those of placenta rituals as described in modern folklore. We came to the conclusion that though in Heijo-kyo they had their own idea about the placenta burial site, the rituals were typically performed by government officials on the basis of ancient Chinese medical books.

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Goryosho 御料所, which are thought to have been the feudal estates under the direct jurisdiction of the Muromachi Bakufu shoguns, have been the focus of historians interested in medieval affairs beginning from regime of Ashikaga Yoshimasa on and have been characterized as being placed in the charge of the Bakufu's direct military vassals (hokoshu 奉公衆) and managed by its Bureau of Household Affairs (Mandokoro 政所). Due to this rather unbalanced image, it has become difficult to proactively evaluate various important aspects of Goryosho, such as its fiscal revenues. To begin with, if we focus on Goryosho during the Muromachi period as estates entirely prioritized as feudal holdings totally exempt from taxes and duties, the conventional characterization of them all having been placed in the hands of hokoshu becomes too limited, for such holdings had also been bestowed on kinsfolk of the Muromachi Shogunate Family, the patriarch of which the author of this paper refers to as Muromachi-dono 室町殿. Moreover, not only the Bakufu's hokoshu, but also its military provincial governors (shugo 守護) were the recipients of Goryosho holdings; and when we consider the Bakufu's golden age from the regime of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, through that of Yoshinori, focusing exclusively on the estates managed by the Mandokoro becomes very problematic. Bringing into view such inconsistencies in the research to date, the author of this article attempts to reexamine what is known factually about Goryosho during the Bakufu's Yoshimatsu-Yoshinori golden age, in order to show that among Goryosho, there existed estates that were huge in terms of both capacity and the revenue they generated. The author also argues that the importance of Goryosho among the provinces should be reevaluated, indicating that the large scale revenues from its estates (shoen 荘園) were also generated in even the remotest regions, making the Ashikaga Shogun Family one of the elite among all shoen proprietors. Finally, turning to the fact that Goryosho estates were also bestowed upon kinsfolk of the Ashikaga Family, and often replaced and redistributed by each Muromachi-dono, the author again points to the importance of the Ashikaga Shogunate Family as a full-fledged shoen proprietor, a characteristic that has not been given sufficient attention in the research to date.

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Regarding the debate over whether tsuchi-ikki (土一揆) was part of the peasants' class struggle, Y. Inagaki criticized the researches regarded it as such a struggle, arguing that it was carried out by warriors, agents of landlords, or wealthy peasants and thus could not be looked upon as a political struggle. Inagaki's argument has been opposed by not a few scholars to date. At present, the balance of evidence seems to support the argument that tsuchi-ikki was part of the peasants' class struggle. Especially strong support has been provided by the researches on tokusei (徳政, annulling loan contracts) by K. Seta, H. Kasamatsu, and S. Katsumata, which has proved that tokusei demanded by tsuchi-ikki were based on the idea of the land possession common to the residents of villages at that time. On the other hand, it has come to be known that both the unity of peasants based on the village and the idea of the land possession common to villagers in the medieval Japan still prevailed in later premodern times. This brings the author to think that tsuchi-ikki cannot be completely explained only by the two elements in the previous debate, because the term disappears from the documentations by the end of the sixteenth century. The author, therfore, rexamines whether the unity of peasants based on the village is the definitive element of tsuchi-ikki, looking at the connection between daimyo, landlords, warriors and tsuchi-ikki, in order to throw some light upon the aspects that still remain unexplained.

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Inu-Oumono 犬追物, the sport of shooting dogs with bow and arrow, was a popular martial art during the Middle Ages in Japan. Its popularity among not only the warrior elite of the shogunate and provincial magistrates (Shugo 守護) but also ordinary samurai during the Muromachi period is attested to by the large number of place names, Inu-no-Baba (the gaming field for the sport), that still exist in Japan. today. Inu-oumono has been mainly studied as a traditional custom among the samurai class but in this paper the author discusses it as a social phenomenon, dealing in particular with the role played by groups of social infe- riors, kawara-no-mono 河原ノ者, who were diseriminated against, in staging inu-oumono events. The task given to kawara-no-mono groups was to supply on the average 200-300 (sometimes as many as a thousand) target dogs for each event, manage the dogs during the game, then dispose of the wounded animals afterwards. They became involved in the sport due to the fact that the samurai promoters could not supply such large amounts of dogs on their own at such short notice. So they turned to kawara-no-mono who worked keeping streets clean and safe, which included capturing stray dogs. During the events, kawara-no-mono were put in charge of surrounding and freezing dogs that jumped out of the roped-off target circle running wild all over the 70 × 70-meter field. Despite that fact that the bamboo sticks that they carried marked them as inferior "dog-catchers" kawara-no-mono were well-paid for 'their services : in one case 350 kan 貫 (equivalent to about 50 million yen today). This was ample recognition of the hard work required to catch and keep enough dogs for muoumono events that could attract as many as ten thousand spectators and make large profits for the samurai who held them.

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