Abstract
About 50 percent of the electrical machinery production in Japan comes from the Keihin area (Tôkyô, Kanagawa and Saitama Prefectures), surpassing any other concentrated areas of electrical machinery producers such as Ôsaka, Nagoya, Hitachi etc.
The purposes of this paper are 1) to investigate the distribution of electrical machinery industry in the Keihin area, and 2) to make clear the spatial interactions of the manufacturing activities of electrical machinery production.
1) Electrical machinery plants are widely scattered over most parts of the Keihin area, although the majority of the plants are concentrated in the Jônan district and southward, stretching from the Tôkyô Tower to Kawasaki City. Especially concentrated is the southern part of Tôkyô such as Ôta, Shinagawa, Minato and Meguro Wards, where 40 percent of all the plants concerned in the Keihin area is seen. So, the writer gives the name of “core area” to this part of Tokyo.
Even before the last war, most of the factories had been already concentrated in the “core area”. Besides the Jônan district, minor concentrated districts exist only in Musashino, Sumida and Arakawa. However, the industry was originated in the Oinza and Shiba areas and later moved southward to the present location.
2) The electrical machinery manufacturing industry had made a tremendous progress before the war accelerated by the demand from the government and the military, and now practically all sorts of the articles are produced in the Keihin area. Various types of subcontract factories make all qualities of parts and accesories to order. As a result, each plant forms intricate connections with subcontract factories through the purchase and sale of its produce.
The Jônan district has many large factories which have a world-wide fame such as Sony, Toshiba, Fuji and INC. These large plants, however, only assemble parts and accesories produced by their subcontract factories. Most of the parts makers are gathered in the southern Tôkyô, each desiring constant connection with the market formed by the accumulation of various kinds of assembly plants. Most of the factories producing electrical machinery located in the Keihin area also have intricate connections with the plants in the core area concerning the purchase and sale of parts and accesories. So, the “core area” in the southern Tôkyô can be said to be the center of the spatial interaction of the electrical machinery industry in the Keihin area.
