The part extending from the northern foot of Mt. Fuji to the drainage of the River Katsura is Called the Gunnai District, where silk industry prevails with a tradition several hundred years old. The district now forms a great industrial region where the area covered by over 20 small towns and villages contains about 4.700 silk mills and several hundred others connected with silk industry, and the enterprise there, it may be said, presents a type of the small-scale domestic industries traditional in our country. The thesis here is the results of the several field investigations the writer made there during 1952.
I. The Scale of the Individual Mills
The number of the workers in a mill averages only 2.3: it shows that the individual mill is being run as an exceedingly small-scale domestic project, and, consequently, that it depends highly upon the family hands, and employees, if any, being mostly residents. Furthermore, the average number of the weaving machines employed in a mill is only 2.6: it is too small, as compared with the nation-wide average of 11, 2.
II. The Varieties of the Products.
Technically, the weavers there have had a unique tradition of producing mecomi-mono (close texture) by the use of sakizome-ito (fine yarn dyed before woven). During the Yedo period (1600-1870) the district was distinguished as a center of the lining for the haori or the material for bedding, while, at the present time, it is the greatest center of the lining for suits and the material for umbrellas and raincoats, the yearly outputs amounting to 75 or 95% of those made throughout the country.
III. The Differentiation of the Manufacturing Processes.
Un order to find a nation-wide market for their products, the small weavers there are obliged to co-operate one another by specializing in one or other of the manufacturing processes. Accordingly, they form themselves into social and regional groups of stuff purchasers, weavers, dyers, finishers and dealers, functioning as a whole almost like a modern colossal factory.
IV. The Relation between the Industry and Farming
The geographical features of these district do not afford ample land for cultivation, and the climate there does not render it sufficiently fruitful. Consequently, the farming there has been found difficult to maintain as an independent undertaking, and it has inevitably assumed a character of being a subsidiary business more or less dependent on other industries. The writer has been enabled to prove, by analyzing the data of 1879, 1922 and 1950, that the surplus labor in farming has been turned to sericulture and silk weaving, thus farming and textile industry being united into one. It may be possible only through the analysis of such farming features to understand fully the characteristics of the manufactural structure of the weaving industry in the Gunnai District.

View full abstract

The modernization of rural communities in Meiji era was always led by reformation of the local administration. The Law of Touns & Villages in 1889 gave an epochmaking influence not only to local administration but also to the socio-economic life of rural communities. The new towns and villages, after enforcement of the law, consisted of several old towns or villages depending on the same geographical conditions. But when the law was enforced, many villages protested that they were not combined with proper communities which had common interest for living. In the claims of such towns or villages of Saitama pref. the writer perceived that they were strongly anxious to keep the old community system, such as a group of communities depending upon the same irrigating canals, common cultivating or manufacturing products. But there was no town or village which maintained to make a new town or village depending upon Iriai-chi, a common forest for fertilizer and fuel, which was an important tie of old rural communities. So maintenance of the old community system through claiming to keep such forests as a tie of communities was not so strong as the other conditions. Disoluving of common forests in Japan had already started in the beginning of Meiji era and then was quichly promoted after Russo-Japanese War. The reshuffling of towns & villages in 1889 did ont influence it instantly.

View full abstract