水平的企業間取引，機械化，産地ブランド： 灘清酒産地の展開過程，1953–2017

抄録

While the role of clusters in promoting industrial development has been increasingly recognized, the long-term historical development processes of industrial clusters have seldom been analyzed. This article explores the long-term process of cluster development, with special attention to the changing roles of agglomeration economies, as well as networking and collective actions of breweries, based on the post-war experience of sake brewing districts in Japan. Nada, the most advanced brewing district in Japan, had grown through the horizontal division of labor between large firms, which engaged in both production and sales, and small firms, which specialized in production, during the 1950s, when production was labor-intensive and the availability of raw material of rice was limited. In addition, the firms in Nada had enjoyed the Marshallian agglomeration economies arising from the developed skilled labor market in this period. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the adoption of capital-intensive mechanized brewing method, induced by significant wage growth, replaced skilled labor in Nada. Such diminishing importance of skilled labor was achieved by sacrificing the quality of sake. In recent years, Nada’s breweries have faced a rapid decline in demand for their reasonable-quality sake, due to the increasing demand for high-quality sake mainly produced by small-sized firms in small brewing districts. This crisis induced the quality improvement in Nada’s sake through the establishment of local district brand by collectively internalizing the external benefits of information spillovers about improved production methods. As a result, the declining production of the district was halted. This suggests the important role of innovation through local collective action among firms in the development of industrial clusters, which has not been taken into account in the Marshallian theory of agglomeration.