This paper provides a historical analysis of the Special Permission for Residence (SPR), a discretionary measure of relief for undocumented immigrants in Japan until the 1970s, the period before the Japanese government signed the Refugee Convention. SPR deserves close attention in the sense that it has served as a strategic measure to make Japanese immigration system work for the authority’s purposes. According to the Immigration Bureau, decisions to grant permission are made from two apparently incompatible points of view, namely,“humanitarian considerations”and“national interests,”although it seems that the latter has always been given priority over the former in actual cases. It needs to be explained how this relief measure was incorporated and utilized in the postwar Japanʼs immigration control system.

The historical origin of the SPR in Japan was the relief measure during the Allied Occupation granted to illegalized immigrants, Korean in most cases, based on a petition submitted to the General Headquarters. After the restoration of sovereignty, as the South Korean government refused to accept deportees, the Japanese government reintroduced this relief measure, from an allegedly “humanitarian”standpoint, for those to be deported. Thus, the SPR functioned as a complement to postwar Japanʼs foreign policy of reincorporating itself into the international community while avoiding postcolonial responsibilities. On the other hand, the SPR was never applied to political refugees in spite of the existence of those seeking asylum in Japan. It was in this situation that three cases in court filed in the 1960s functioned as challenges to Japanʼs immigration policy. The results of these cases showed that Japanʼs immigration authority was never tolerant of any substantial restrictions to its large discretionary power over immigrants.

Namely, the authority succeeded in reversing the judgement to restrict its discretionary power by a particular international norm, a political offense exception in extradition, whereas it did not strongly resist the judgement to restrict its discretionary power by an universal but abstract humanitarian principle.

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This study is the first trial to verify how the function and character of the Ritsurin-Park, which already lost the inherent function of the Daimyo-Garden at the time of Meiji Restoration, has been changed thoroughly since then through up to now, with respect to the social background, utilized form and spatial structure. And hence, in this paper, based upon our empirical fact-findings and verifications, we are to re-evaluate the characteristics of the present Ritsurin-Park, and also to find some clues to meaningful policy-recommendations on how to arrange and utilize it in the future. If we consider the historical details and/or circumstances of the Ritsurin-Park, which was originally brought forth by opening the former Daimyo-Garden to the public, the following two main different viewpoints should be taken into account. Namely one is the way of thinking on conserving the historical heritage as the garden, the other is the way of thinking on adding something new to it as the park. Therefore, we must consider how to harmonize such conflicting viewpoints as a historical garden or as current and modern park for furthermore arrangement of the park.

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Regarding the historical evolution of Japanese mass media industries after defeat in World War II, the half century since the year 1945 may be divided into four periods as follows: the first is from 1945 to the end of the 1950s; the second includes all of the 1960s and the first three years of the 1970s up until the Oil Crisis; the third spans the long stagnation which continued to the middle of the 1980s, and finally the fourth, which came with the bubble economy, continues after its bursting, showing drastic changes in mass media industries in the face of the multimedia age. Each of these periods has given many different characteristics to the substructure of Japanese newspapers and brordcasting, Also, the quality of Japanese jounalism has been influenced profoundly by these industrial changes.

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