Abstract
The distribution of major industries can not adequately be explained in terms of plant number, labor strength, output, or industrial population. Plants belonging to the same enterprise can not be counted separately as an independent production unit since they constitute an integral whole. Nor has been made any attempt to illustrate the economic structure of a nation in terms of the volume of capital employed by various enterprises.
The object of this article is to show the distribution of Japanese economic actvities by calculating the production capacity of plants of major industries on the basis of added value. The term of added value as used in this article means the value obtained as the result of division of the net incomes of key industries by workmen involved. The investigation covers 106 companies among 112, engaged in commercial production whose of 106 companies capital was over one billion Yen as of October 1, 1955. Total factories are 663 in number. Table 1 shows the pyramidal structure of our economy in each important industrial area. AA indicates such enterprises as have an annual added value of two billion Yen and over ; A stands for those having one billion Yen ; C one quarter billion ; D one hundred million, and E less than one hundred million Yen. Table 2 covers the textile industry only.
A. Classification by industries. 1) The center of the textile industry is the Nobi District. This industry is characterized by its low labor productivity per head and most of textile plants are operated on a small scale.
2) No small number of electric machinery production plants are found inland areas unlike other key industries.
3) Plants producing chemicals, cement, and paper are mostly located in town districts with small exceptions which are operating in a remote place on account of easy access to raw materials and fuels.
B. Location. 1) Tokyo and Osaka provide a very large market for production industries. With the rapid industrial expansion of this country, these two conurbation areas have become to obtain large industrial belts outside of its metropolitan district, for instance, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Amagasaki and Kobe.
2) The Nobi District with Nagoya as its center is conspicuous with a great number of small textile mills scattered over Aichi, Mie and Gifu prefectures and heavy chemical industries Nagoya, Yokkaichi, and Koromo.
3) Hitachi, Takaoka, Niihama, Sakaide, Aioi, Kurashiki, Mihara, Otake, Iwakuni, Hikari, Kudamatsu, Ube, Kammon-area, Omuda and Nagasaki are cities taken their present forms as the result of the development of one or two enterprises existing therein.
4) 15 prefectures have less than two plants of “C” class business scale. Yamagata, Gumma, Ishikawa and Fukui prefectures have no production plants to speak of. As shown above, major industries are mostly concentrated around large cities.
