Abstract
Until the 1940s, based on the abundance and good quality of local bamboo resources, the bamboo industry in the south of Shiga Prefecture had developed as a producing center of the material bamboo and bleached bamboo. Material bamboo was used for processing and industrial materials. Bleached bamboo was made of material bamboo of good quality, which was used for landscape gardening and building materials. In the 1950s, however, the production of material bamboo and bleached bamboo decreased and the quality degraded because of the advent of substitutes and the rejuvenation by flowering of Phyllostachys bambusoides. Many producers dropped out and survivors were urged to take some measures. Since the late 1960s, some of the bleached bamboo producers which had close relations with bamboo factors in Kyoto, have begun to produce finished bamboo products for landscape gardening and building. The reason why they could do so was that they were offered production know-how by the bamboo factors in Kyoto. After that, they started to sell their products to the whole country through factors not only in Kyoto but also in Wakayama and Aichi. They almost depended on the bamboo resources outside the Shiga Prefecture because the quality of local bamboo resources had degraded. On the other hand, a few of the material bamboo producers survived by producing divided bamboo for lathing materials. It developed as the producing center of bamboo products for landscape gardening and building. Its base was shifted from the dependence on the local bamboo resources of good quality to the production know-how acquired from the Kyoto factors.
