抄録
It goes without saying that economic and industrial growth of prewar Japan had much relied on the development of silk industry. Nevertheless, the previous studies have concentrated upon the research of the growth of export market and business of export products from the view of trade balance of prewar Japan, and unreasonably ignored the importance of domestic market.
This paper attempts to clarify the increasing domestic market and consumption of raw silk during the period from 1870s to 1920s by closely examining the various kinds of statistical data including cocoon production as original material. This also tries to analyze a secular trend of the domestic demand, as well as production and distribution process of raw silk in prewar Japan. One of the most important findings in this research is the larger scale of domestic silk market than the estimated figure of the previous researches. The other significant point this paper has made is to show the evidence that the variety and requirement of the domestic market had distinctively differed from export products, accordingly the repeated increase of export had not always induced the decrease of the importance of the domestic market of raw silk in the period.
