抄録
Today Shizuoka is one of the wealthiest prefectures in Japan. In the Meiji period her standing was unmistakably lower, implying that the prefecture achieved a comparatively high economic growth between the early Meiji and the present. This paper explores what happened in this province during the first half of that period.
First, based on benchmark-year estimates of prefectural output, population and the labour force, made available by Hitotsubashi University's Institute of Economic Research, it is revealed that Shizuoka's performance of output growth between 1874 and 1940 was higher than the national average, and that it was associated with her industrialisation record: mining and manufacturing's share expanded from 8 to 34 per cent and their average labour productivity exhibited a ninefold increase over the 66-year period. Also worth noting is that the gap between agriculture and manufacturing did not widen so much as happened on the national level in the 192040 period, suggesting that her agriculture did rather well in the post-1920 years. Second, tabular analysis of output statistics shows that the leading industry was cotton weaving. Although the opening of the Treaty Ports to international trade in 1859 had a devastating impact on Shizuoka's cotton cultivation, its weaving branch survived the competition from imported cotton cloth. Soon this traditional textile trade started growing by expanding putting-out arrangements, and then transformed itself into a factory industry by introducing power looms and expanded its market from rural to urban districts, then to Asian countries. Its growth, moreover, interacted with a burgeoning machinery and equipment industry, who produced not just power looms but began to manufacture a wide range of products including wheeled vehicles and musical instruments. Substantial investment was also made in the prefecture's cotton spinning and paper making, two factory industries built on imported technologies from the West. But it was a synergy between the traditional weaving trade and the new-born machinery industry that acted as a driving force in the prefecture's manufacturing growth.
To conclude, pre-war Shizuoka in her journey to industrialisation acquired a comparative advantage in the processing and assembly manufactures, not in materials industries. This advantage was lost in the late 1930s with the imperial government's drive for a war economy. However, post-war Shizuoka did return to the pre-1935 growth path after the prefectural government's proposed project of a large-scale petrochemical industrial complex was withdrawn amid residents' fierce protests.
