This article attempts to clarify the process of writing and copying the diary of the Tokugawa Shogunate through an analysis of the Keeper of the Diary (Nikki-gakari 日記掛) and comes to the following conclusions. To begin with, the office of Diary Keeper was created sometime between 1737 and 1746, consisting of one supervisor and two assistants. The Keeper was to direct the various Bakufu offices to submit to him reports of their activities and then hand them to the Diary Secretariat (Nikki-Kata Omote-Yuhitsu 日記方) for entry into the Bakufu diary. This secretariat was looked after by one supervisor and one assistant rotating on a monthly basis, and the system which lasted until at least 1822. Secondly, since no copies of the Bakufu dairy existed at the time the Keeper was set up, the office issued a report in 1791 describing the reproduction of the diary and how much of it had been preserved or lost. Consequently a project was launched to copy the extant parts of the diary, with talented scribes from outside the office specially assigned to copy the content recorded between 1631 and 1790. From that time on, the Keeper and Diary Secretariat cooperated in making the copies, thus marking a significant change in how the Bakufu dairy was recorded. Another copying project was conducted during the Koka 弘化 Era (1844-47) when the Ohikaecho 御扣帳 copy of the dairy was completed.

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Documents written on wood, because of such properties as durability in the face of inclement weather, ease of re-use by surface planing, and greater portability, have been heretofore understood as playing only a supporting role to documents written on paper. In this essay the author investigates 1)wooden documents used in the promulgation of laws, 2)those recording village compacts and the completion of memorial celebrations, 3)those used in relation to commercial activities, 4)those used in witchcraft and prayer, 5)other miscellaneous uses and 6)the method for writing wooden inscriptions. As a result of his study, the author concludes that many of the general ideas held about wooden documents, such as their relative unimportance compared to paper due to the latters higher cost, in fact prove to be unfounded prejudices. Rather the act of writing on wood was often times performed for the purpose of reaching and informing more people over a wider area than mere paper documents could ever do. Also wood was used in situations where paper just would not serve the purpose, for example, in order to indicate measures of distance and volume. That is to say, at times wooden documents played a much more important informational role than their paper counterparts. With respect to the classification of wooden documents, size, use/purpose, and the level of relation to or support of paper documents are all legitimate ways of dividing them up. Also, because function, use and size are very often closely related, more refined classification may be necessary ; but this remains outside the scope of the present paper, which was written merely to emphasize the importance of wooden documents as historical source materials through the exposition of some interesting examples.

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This aim of this article is to consider the workings of the late premodern Japanese state through an investigation of the elements of ranked status among the shoguns, emperors and shognate lord (daimyo 大名) and the cort noble (kuge 公家) families, using manuals of letter writing etiquette kept by the great feudal families (daimyoke 大名家). The standards for the aristocratsamurai ranked status order were complicated, involving both bureaucratic status and family pedigree among the aristocracy and bureaucratic status and stipends (kokudaka 石高) among the daimyo, in addition to the factors of each family's complex historical tradition, all of which determined a ranked order letter writing styles. The letter writing styles of the daimyo families were not only influenced by such factors as their position as "other families" (besides the shogunate and emperor) and the letter writing style of the shogunate itself, but also family pedigree and the social mobility that occurred in the kuge-daimyo ranked status order, which each family was constantly trying to improve. While the different styles of letter writing during the Enpo (1673-81) and Kyoho (1716-36) Eras were formed by ranking along the lines of a fixed emperor-shogun order, followed by a kuge-daimyo order, the standards for the ranking became more numerous and the system lacked uniformity, as the status distinctions between aristocrats and daimyo becoming gradually clearer, reflecting the present situation. However, at the same time the kuge-daimyo order came to possess to some extent a coordinated interrelationship. Although the period's kuge-daimyo ranked status order was an issue linked to the state, power structure, as well as political problems and foreign relations, the way in which it was supposed to work was by no means fixed or self-evident. In addition, the problems taken up in this article form an important starting point for examining the changes which occurred in the kuge-daimyo (kobu 公武) order during the Meiji Restoration and when taking up the cases of families other than the Maeda and Tsugaru Clans.

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The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between the Tokugawa Bakufu and Japan's feudal domains from the time of the Kansei Era reforms, which began in 1787, through the Kyowa Era, ending in 1804, by portraying a comprehensive picture of the scandal of 1801 involving feudal domain representatives stationed in Edo (rusui 留守居) and their concurrent punishment. The author begins by analyzing the Bakufu deliberations regarding how the rusui were to be punished, questioning of the suspects by Bakufu superintendent Inoue Moritoshi and Moritoshi's recommendations to top feudal domain officers concerning punishment, in order to understand the incident from beginning to end. Of the 59 top domain officers ordered to punish their rusui, 30 were feudal lords (daimyo 大名) who were in attendance before the Shogun in the Teikan Hall at Edo Castle, meaning that they had been allies (fudai 譜代) of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Next, the author turns to the developments within the feudal establishment after the incident and the problems facing the related research to date, which has been retarded due to historiographical reasons. In particular, the author points to the spontaneity with which the Teikan Hall daimyo chose to discipline their rusui, showing that there were those among them who were not marked for punishment, a fact which demonstrates the great impact which the scandal exerted on the feudal domains. Finally, the author examines reasons why the rusui under provincial scale (kunimochi 国持) daimyo and the Tokugawa Ieyasu family domains (gosanke 御三家) were not punished. He shows that punishing the kunimochi rusui would have dealt a serious blow to the Shogunates's prestige and authority, while punishing the gosanke rusui would have provided the pretense for the elders (tukekaro 付家老) of those domains, many of whom were descendants of fudai daimyo vassals, to elevate themselves to the level of "daimyo." The author concludes that while the Bakufu during the Kyowa Era exhibited a high degree of severity in dealing with the rusui scandal, it was also forced to give careful consideration to all of the affair's possible ramifications and nuances. Moreover, such thoroughness was a characteristic feature of Bakufu operations during that time and an important factor in its relationship with the country's feudal domains.

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