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Volume 49 (1983)
- Issue 6 Pages 557-
- Issue 5 Pages 445-
- Issue 4 Pages 337-
- Issue 3 Pages 219-
- Issue 2 Pages 113-
- Issue 1 Pages 1-
Volume 49, Issue 6
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
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TAKAMASA ICHIKAWAArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 557-561,706
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSTextile manufacturing was the key industry in prewar Japan's economy, with weaving being an important branch of that industry. The study of textiles has so far been regared as an important one to identify at what stage the bakumatsu economy was, which in turn enables us to clarify the historical character of the Meiji Restoration as the starting point of modernization. However, it should be stressed, the study of the textile industry, especially weaving, is equally, or more, important to explore the mechanisms of development from 1890 onwards. Thus there are four problems we are concerned with in relation to the main subject here. The first is to analyze an organic relation between weaving activities and the landlord system in the rural sector. The second is to delineate changing circumstances of the weaving industry in relation to the supply of industrial motive power and producers' goods by the modern industrial sector under changing conditions of factor endowments and relative factor prices. Thirdly we need to know to what extent weavers succeeded in breaking through the control by merchant capitalists. Finally we shall turn to comparing Japan's rural industrialization with European proto-industrialization.View full abstractDownload PDF (525K) -
TAKESHI ABEArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 562-584,706-70
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSThe purpose of this paper is to survey the nationwide develoment of the Japanese cotton weaving industry from 1914 to 1937. This industry in modern Japan was composed of big factories run by a relatively small number of cotton spinning firms, on the one hand, and of numerous small- and medium-scale weavers, on the other. This paper focuses on the latter. Those weavers were usually concentrated in an identifiable area. In section 2, 27 representative areas are selected; then in section 3, their output, markets, composition of products, size of workshop, and level of technology are analysed based on statistical data, and the areas are grouped into four types. The type 1 areas adopted power looms and factory system before World War I, and increased their output thereafter by large-scale production of a few kinds of products for the foreign markets with relatively large-scale factories. The type 2 areas introduced power looms and factory system in the 1910s, and then increased their output by limited production of a wide variety of products with relatively small-scale workshops. The type 3 areas managed to adoped power looms and factory system, but they did not increase output. The type 4 areas, failing to have introduced power looms, decreased output substantially. Very small-scale weavers of this type just maintained the production of traditional products for the domestic markets by handicraft work. Finally in section 4, the factors with which 27 areas are classified into those four types are reviewed.View full abstractDownload PDF (2248K) -
FUMIO MAKINOArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 585-607,705-70
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSThe diffusion of new technology seems to be one of the most important elements of technological progress, which has played a significant role in the process of Japanese economic development. To examine the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, therefore, it is indispensable to explore conditions for technological diffusion. It has not been necessarily clear, however, how the new technology replaces the old one. To examine this problem, we study the conditions for diffusion of power looms in the Japanese weaving industry, one of the leading industries during the prewar period. In the first section, it is hypothesized that the entrepreneurs choose the technology which has the highest profitability among the alternatives, with the result that a certain technology will come into widespread use. In order to test this hypothesis, the rate of net profit among five types of loom technology are estimated. We then analyse the relationship between changes in relative profitability of the alternative technologies over time and their diffusion, and between the choice of loom technology and the type of business organization. The results obtained are as follows: (1) Generally speaking, at each point in time the loom that had the highest rate of net profit among the alternatives was adopted. (2) The rate of net profit on modern looms was higher in the modern business organization, whereas that on traditional looms was higher in the traditional business organization. In the second section, we test three basic hypotheses that attempt to explain the regional difference in the rate and timing of diffusion of power looms, namely (1) the diffusion of factory system as a modern business organization, (2) the technological adaptation of power looms dictated by the product mix, (3) the availability of electricity as cheap motive energy. It is found that the diffusion of factory system is the most important among three factors. It accounts for a large portion of an increase in the diffusion of power looms over time and its regional differences. The increasing availability of electric power explains mechanization significantly, especially in the earlier periods, while it does not lead to regional differences in mechanization. As for the regional differences in mechanization, a difference in the product mix makes non-negligible influences. In the third section, we examine the development and production of power looms. It is emphasized that rapid increase in power looms was attributable to inexpensive power looms which adapted to the factor endowment at that time. Most of them were produced by a lot of small and medium scale loom-makers in weaving regions. This is indeeed on of the best examples of what is now called "appropriate technology".View full abstractDownload PDF (2103K) -
KIYOYUKI ISHIKAWAArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 608-642,704-70
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSThe purpose of this paper is to show how the relation between the local weaving industry and the landlord system changed in the Bisai districtView full abstractDownload PDF (3018K) -
TADASHI KOSHOArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 643-669,703-70
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSIn the case of the textile industry in the Ashikaga district, known as one of the typical areas of the traditional textile industry, development following the industrial revolution did not materialize. One of the causes of this was attributable to the market structure or the production structure of the "putting-out" system predominant in this district, on the basis of the relation between landowners and peasants. Adding to that, it originated from tax increases in the industrial revolution period, exploitation of the clothiers through the local raw yarn merchants and cloth brokers, and hence, lowered profit rates for clothiers; in other words, their poor capital accumulation resulted from the above-mentioned causes. And these facts forced the clothiers to depend on the "putting-out" system more and more. The rich clothiers in small number gradually became landowners and merchants. In the end, therefore, the owners of the textile industry remained with small capital. With the crisis in 1920, as a turning point, power looms came into the Ashikaga listrict. The country-wide spread of low cost power looms, electrification, relative and absolute rises in wages, the intensified competition in the home market, and changes in products are the factors. However, because of poor capital accumulation, many factories with power looms could not but depend on the big factories, colth brokers or raw yarn merchants for their financial necessities. This resulted in the characteristic structure of the textile industry, where 80-90% of the total factories were very small with less than 20 looms, 60-70% being subordinate factories. The introduction of power looms, with burdens falling on wage workers, broke the relation between the textile industry and the "parasitic landlord" system, by intensifying a "contradiction" between the landowners and peasants, and kept development of the "parasitic landlord" system itself in check. However, the decisive factor of the decay of the "parasitic landlord" system was the behavior of the power loom factory owners, directing their profits to land purchase, who became powerful in the period of the Showa crisis, together with tax policy of the state and influences of the Showa crisis.View full abstractDownload PDF (2570K) -
SAMU SAITOArticle type: Article
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 670-687,701
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSThe principal aim of this essay is not to provide a new set of first-hand source materials, nor to report results of data analysis, but to give a critical survey of literature and, in so doing, to draw attention to some neglected facts about, and features of the shift from handicraft to factory. Section 1 sets out a list of factors operating in the course of transition to factory by surveying the literature on both Japan and the west. It will be stressed that the 'transition' was not a single course of change, nor a unilinear tendency; mechanisation (i. e. adoption of power looms in the case of weaving), a shift from dispersed production to centralised workshop, and changes in the functions of merchant-producers ought to be examined as seperate aspects of the transition to factory. In section 2, some notable features will be pointed out with respect to cotton and silk weaving in prewar Japan. An emphasis is placed on the finding that two distinct peaks of increase in power looms adopted appeared in periods of depression, i.e. in about 1910 and in the 1920s. This raises the question of why labour-saving machines were introduced in depressed years when labour was relatively abundant. This is explored in section 3 by focusing on cotton. It is suggested that more importance should be attached to the growing intensity of inter-regional competition, reflected in quite a flexible and fluctuating manner of cloth price changes, as a factor explaining mechanisation which set the pace in the course of transition to factory.View full abstractDownload PDF (1707K) -
Article type: Index
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 694-699
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSDownload PDF (248K) -
Article type: Bibliography
1984 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 701-706
Published: March 29, 1984
Released on J-STAGE: July 15, 2017
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESSDownload PDF (314K)
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