SOCIO-ECONOMIC HISTORY
Online ISSN : 2423-9283
Print ISSN : 0038-0113
ISSN-L : 0038-0113
Volume 39, Issue 2
Displaying 1-11 of 11 articles from this issue
  • TADASHI UDA
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 121-147
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Considerably left behind European Powers and United States, Meiji Japan direted her course towards a capitalistic state, and was going to enter into Chinse colonial market. However, since the most powerful capitalists (Zaibatsu groups) hesitated the investment abroad for its riskfulness, Japanese Governement was obliged to import foreign capitals for the purpose of propulsion the capital export to China which was more necessary for national profits after the Shino-Japanese War (1894-1895). Winning the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan openly started to coionize Manchuria, and established the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu) for smooth colonization under the new international balance of powers. It was nothing but 'civil-defence' advocated by Shimpei Goto who was the first president of Mantetsu. Mantetsu was a mammoth enterprise, composed of railway, coal-mining, iron-manufacture, electric work, hotel, local administrative institutions and research organizations. Besides, it directly conducted over seventy companies of commerce, industry or service, therefore it was named 'Mantetsu-Konzern'. It was de facto State enterprise, in other words, a substitute of Japanese Government. Charged with the important political functions to obtain the substantial hegemony on Manchuria, it was often operated passing over cal-culation, for example, the repeated loans in order to railway-construction for Chinese Government. Unfortunately, before long, the aggravation of international relations, especially the tension among the Easten Asia and the difficulties in domestic society drived Japan into the military adventure in Manchuria. Pushing away Mantetsu, Kwantung Army was thereafter executing the plan for 'military-defence' as a new controller of Manchuria. With its support, was soon founded Japanese puppet state 'Manchukuo', and established Manchuria Heavy Industries Development Company (Manshu Jukogyo) with the object of heavy-industrialization of Manchuria. On the other hand, Mantetsu was reduced to the original system centering traffic business. However, the interdependence organization between Japan and Manchukuo was finally broken by the extraordinary enlargement of war situation around Eastern Asia. In brief, the curse of Japanese capitalism operating upon Manchuria was very strategically directed through the influences of the Korean domination that was in more close connexion with Japan herself and the international balance of powers.
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  • TAKEO OHNISHI
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 148-169
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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    In dieser Studie, die einen Teil der in Gottingen vorgelegten Dissertation d. V. widerlegt, bildet die Kritik an der bisherigen wissenschaftlichen Behandlung des preuBischen Zollgesetzes vom 26. Mai 1818 den Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung. Die bisherige Literatur sieht dieses Gesetz entweder nur unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Vorgeschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins, ohne seine Bedeutung fur die preuBische Wirtschaft ausreichend zu wurdigen, oder kommt, soweit sie dies doch tut, zu kontroversen Ergebnissen. AuBerdem weist sie methodische Mangel auf; so wird das Gesetz und die auf seiner Grundlage betriebene Zolltarifpolitik nicht getrennt behandelt. Autgrund dieser methodischen Uberlegung stellt d. V. nicht das Zollgesetz von 1818, sondern das Zolltarifsystem in den Vordergrund und versucht, einem schon oft behandelten Gegenstand einen bisher vernachlassigten, aber wirtschaftsgeschichtlich wichtigen Aspekt abzugewinnen. Fur diese neue Fragestellung wertete d. V. das bisher nicht veroffentlichte Quellenmaterial im Deutschen Zentralarchiv Merseburg aus. Diese Aktenstudie weist nach, daB das preuBische Zolltarifsystem von 1818, einschl. der Steuersatze, im groBen und ganzen bereits im Jahre1813 herausgebildet wurde, und daB diese Vorarbeiten in den Gesetzentwurf vom 14. Januar 1817 des Finanzministers v. Bulow uber die Steuerreform der neuen preuBischen Monarchie fast unverandert aufgenommen wurden. Das Gesetz vom 26. Mai 1818, das aus diesen Vorarbeiten erwachsen war, brachte PreuBen zum ersten Mal in seiner Geschichte ein einheitliches Grenzzollsystem. Vom wirtschaftspolitischen Gesichtspunkt gesehen sollte das neue Zollgesetz durch die Abschaffung der inneren Zolle einen freien Innenmarkt und gemaB seinen liberalen Bestimmungen ein freies Handelssystem mit dem Ausland herbeigefuhrt haben. Jedoch ist im groBten Teil der Literatur bisher nicht genugend berucksichtigt worden, 1. daB das Zollgesetz nur im Zusammenhang mit der Reform der gesamten indirekten Steuern eine Bedeutung fur den freien inneren Verkehr erlangen konnte, und 2. daB die liberale Handelspolitik im Sinne des Gesetzes nicht in vollem MaBe durchgefuhrt wurde, sondern daB vielmehr die tatsachliche Steuerbelastung des AuBenhandels durch das neue Zolltarifsystem von den freihandlerischen Bestimmungen des Gesetzes abwich. So mussen nicht die Paragraphen des Gesetzes, sondern die Grundzuge des preuBischen Zolltarifsystems und dessen Wirkung auf die preuBische Wirtschaft, insbesondere auf den AuBenhandel, in den Vordergrund der Untersuchung gestellt werden. Erst von dieser Grundlage ausgehend kann nach den Grundmotiven der preuBischen Zolltarifpolitik und deren Bedeutung fur die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung PreuBens in der Zeit vor der Grundung des Deutschen Zollvereins gefragt werden.
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  • OSAMU SAITO
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 170-189
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to survey the trend of agricultural wage-rates in Japan for two centuries between 1720 and 1920. The source materials are gathered from two different regions, Osaka and Suwa. Money wages and real wages (expressed in rice) of agricultural day labourers in the area around Osaka and the Suwa region are shown in Tables 1-2 on pp. 184-5 and Figures 1-3 on pp. 173-5. (note that the eighteenth-century series in the Osaka region is not linked with the nineteenth-century wage-rate). In the area around Osaka, both money and real wages continued to rise during the eighteenth century. Considering the rates of increase, however, we can note their diminishing trends in the latter half of that century. During the next fifty years the money wages were stationary, so that the real rates fell sharply from the 1820s to the Restoration. After the prompt recovery, there was a trough from 1891/95 to 1901/05; even the money wages fell slightly from 1886/90 to 1891/95. The full-scale rise began with the turn of the century, and it was followed without a break by the boom in the latter half of the 1910s. For the Suwa region, a center of sericulture and silk reeling in the Meiji period, we have only fragmentary information about wage-rates in the later Tokugawa period. Nevertheless, it seems safe to say that there was also a rising trend from the end of the eighteenth century to 1820; in particular the increased rate for female workers was notable. Between the restoration and the 1890s there was no such trough in the series of real wages as seen in the Osaka region; nor in the series of money wages (except a slight stagnation during the Matsukata deflation). On the contrary, it is the next twenty years that might be called the sluggish period. It would be worth saying something in addition to chronology for further study. (1) In both regions there was an upswing phase during the later Tokugawa period. This might have had a closer connexion to each regional economy than other phases had; in other words, there might have been many regions which had not experienced such a phase before the Meiji industrialization. (2) In the first half of the nineteenth century, the movement of money wages in the area around Osaka, the most advanced region, was stationary. This is true, not only of agricultural day labourers, but also of builders in Kyoto. A similar phenomenon is also observed in the case of one-year hokonin near Edo (see Figure 4 on p. 181.) (3) We have seen a contrast between the movements of the wage-rates of two regions in the Meiji period. This phenomenon must be connected with the structure of the manufacturing sector and the pattern of its development in each region. (4) Looking at Figure 3 on p. 175, we notice that the lower section of the various wage levels was more stationary than the upper section during the Meiji period in the Suwa region. It was mostly immigrant labourers that formed the lower section. This bring us to another factor: there might have been a high population pressure and a low wage level in the areas from which such labourers came. These areas, perhaps, could not experience any upswing phase during the later Tokugawa period. (For Tables and Figures, see text.)
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  • SHIGEKI KOIKE
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 190-214
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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    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.
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  • Fukuya Kurihara
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 215-218
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Eiichi Hizen
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 218-221
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Noriaki Matsui
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 221-223
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Yoshinaga Irimajiri
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 224-227
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Shoichiro Sato
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 227-230
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Taketoshi Sato
    Article type: Article
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 230-232
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Article type: Bibliography
    1973 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 235-240
    Published: June 25, 1973
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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