Abstract
With the establishment of the Agriculture and Commerce Ministry in the 14th year of Meiji (1881), the governmental policy toward `Increasing production and promoting enterprises', undergoes a shift from direct encouragement of industry toward indirect one. The main reason for this shift, in restricted terms of internal problems, is that the policy up to this time was carried out without paying enough attention to the existing social and economic conditions of Japan Along with this shift of the policy, the Ministry enacted a regulation for trade associations (Dogyokumiai Junsoku)at the end of the 17th year of Meiji (1884), beginning to take trade associations into one of the objects of the governmental policy. It is to be noted, however, that before this ` Junsoku ' was. enacted there had been much groundwork of the tentative policies by the prefectural authorities for the trade associations. These policies by the local authorities can possibly be said in a way to have played a certain role in narrowing a gap between the governmental policy of the early Meiji era and the actual conditions of the traditional industries in general. In this sense, the consideration of the policies carried out by the prefectural authorities is inevitable in any historical comments on ` Junsoku', although the prefectural policy does not necessarily lead directly to the governmental policy. From the view-point above mentioned, the writer tries to consider, as a preparatory step to the overall inquiry into the historical significance of `Junsoku', the prefectural policy mainly before the enactment of ` Junsoku ',in relation to the structural change of the traditional industry in itself, and proceeds to point to some of the ways in which the Meiji Government was necessarily obliged to begin to be concerned with trade associations in the latter half of the second decade of the Meiji esa. The writer takes as an example the case of the Awa indigo (Awa ai)trade association of the Tokushima prefecture, and throws light on the development of its association movement from the 6th through the 16th year of Meiji. when the fundamental bases of its organization in the early Meiji era was completed, with the approval of the Agriculture and Commerce Ministry. The Awa indigo industry, as is well known, flourished in the Tokugawa period, largely backed up by the monopolistic system of the han government in its later stages. Therefore, it will be shown in the paper how this industry responded to the new conditions after the abolishment of the old institutions, and how the structural change of this industry relating not a little to the institutional change reflected on the association movement itself.
