It is possible to safely constitute a key management method having an access structure equivalent to the hierarchical key management method with a small amount of calculations. The method includes: a setting step for setting a set (,) of the number of times a one-way hash function is executed for each of the elements of the rank i; a key generation step for generating two separate keys for the elements as the value of the number of times the one-way function has been executed corresponding to the set of the number of times which has been set for the elements of the two original keys for each of the elements; and a key delivery step for delivering the two separate keys for the elements to each of the elements. Furthermore, the method includes an initial key generation step for calculating N keys with a route node positioned at the most significant node when generating a key at each node from a parent node and performing key delivery according to the hierarchical relationship expressed in a directed graph having no cycle; and a node key generation step for generating the value of the number of predetermined times the one-way function is executed according to the execution specification for M keys (M.ltoreq.N) among the N initial keys in each node, as the M node keys for the node.