Abstract
Technologically considered, the hand-reeling silk industry was not fit for large-scale cooperation. Tengensha, in Maebashi, Gumma Prefecture, was classified as a large workshop in the official statistics. But, if wa examine it making use of records of the firm, it is clear that only the finishing process was done there, and Tengensha was nothing but a putter-out. We can find out many examples of such concentration of finishing process only, if we examine statistics carefully: the hand-reeling industry did not develop into large-scale factory production. The hand-reeling industry was ousted by reeling by machine in the Taisho era, though it survived to the end Meiji, taking advantage of its co-existence with the landlordism.
