Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to study one of the sides of accumulation of capital in the Japanese shipbuilding industry around the end of Meiji and the Taisho periods. And its viewpoint is what influence the formation of two big parts (the merchant shipbuilding one and the warshipbuilding one) in the shipbuilding market held by the internal private shipbuilding enterprises-I think it has been done by around the end of Meiji and the early Taisho-had on the structure of accumulation of capital in these private enterprises. One of the important contradictions included in the structure of accumulation of capital in the Japanese shipbuilding industry is as follows. The more the private enterprises accumulate capital, the more producsive fixed capital becomes enormous. And the more the latter develops, the more the dependence on State with respect to the market cannot help increasing. So, if it happened that protective policies by state could not support the market correspondently with the development of concentration of capital, the private enterprises cannot help facing a structural difficulty in accumulation of capital. That the shipbuilding market came to be composed of two big parts by the remarkable increase of the munitions at the end of Meiji and the early Taisho acted on this structure of accumulation of capital as follows. 1. The remarkable increase of the munitions market reorganized and strengthened this structure. Because after the large development of concentration of productive and fixed capital around 1905-1907 the merchant ship building market-the most important part of the shipbuilding market then-had stagnated and the enterprises had faced a structural difficulty in accumulation of capital. 2. The merchants shipbuilding and the warshipbuilding had the interactive relationship in production facilities and technique. But the merchant shipbuilding market and the warshipbuilding one had the interaction to the larger development of concentration of capital, and the formation of these two big parts in the shipbuilding market rooted a primary factor to increase the contradiction of the reorganized, strengthened structure of accumulation of capital. That two big parts composing the market increased remarkably around the First World War brought enormous profits to the private enterprises and gave impetus to concentration of capital markedly. But they decreased rapidly after around the panic in 1920 and "the reduction of armaments" in 1922, and a large amount of capital fell into an unemployed state. This states clearly that State became unable to support the market correspondent with the new level of concentration of capital for the time being. That is to say, the private enterprises fell into a structural crisis in accumulation of capital. So, the formation of the two big parts in the market had formed the starting point of the structural crisis in accumulation of capital.
