Abstract
The synthetic dyestuff industry in Japan rose as a new chemical industry in a wave of industrialization of manufacturing heavy industrial and chemical products during the First World War. The purpose of this paper is to make clear the factors of its formation and the organization of this industry. In the prewar period, though manufacturing synthetic dyestuff had been attempted cheifly by scientists and state research institutes, and by such supply sides as gas and coke manufacturing companies as a related branch of business, full-fledged industrialization had not been attained yet. However, as the demand for synthetic dyestuff rose, and as the conversion of this industry into munitions industry was possible, the groundwork for the industrialization of this branch had been prepared. The World War prevented chemical goods including synthetic dyestuff from being imported. The government planned to encourage chemical industry, and the scheme of the policy gradually inclined to fostering manufacturing synthetic dyestuff, medicaments, gunpowder, and explosives. Responding to the request to establish a dyestuff manufacturing works, the government enacted Encouragement Act for Manufacturing Dyestuffs and Medical Supplies in 1915. But because this act prohibited the companies that this act was applied to operate multi-divisional business, the act did not meet the intention of gas and coke companies that had played a leading part in promoting the legislation. In 1916 Nippon Senryo Manufacturing Company was founded in conformity with this law. It was a big national policy concern which guaranteed dividend of eight percent. Most of the large shareholders gradually came to be such as related, with dyeing and weaving, while gas and coke manufactures almost with drew by the end of the war. On the other hand there arose many small private enterprises manufacturing dyestuffs, which were characterised by their pedigree of dyeing and weaving tradesmen. Thus the factors to establish the synthetic dyestuff industry in Japan during the First World War were the favourable condition where the foreign competition was excluded, demand for dyestuffs by the existing dyeing and weaving manufacturers, and the state policy responding to the circumstances. Morever it should be noted that the development of this industry, taking a form of product differentiation, came to center on manufacturing sulphide dyestuff for cotton cloth which accounted for a half of the output of the dyestuff.
