With its long history and tradition, sake has become the national drink: It has an inseparable relationship with the Japanese life and is a popular drink for us. This popularization is partly explartly explained by the fact that the rice, from which sake is brewed, is cultivated everywhere, so that sake is produced almost everywhere. But some famous brewing areas take pride of the highest quality and the largest quantity in the country. Sake brewing in Nada(Hyogo Prefecture) developed since the middle of the Tokugawa era, and became a synonym for the high-quality sake. At the end of the Tokugawa era, Chita(Aichi Prefecture) roso to produce the sake for the Edo market in competition with Nada. In the 1980's Chita was accepted as a substitute for Nada's on the Tokyo market. Despite its cheap prices, however, the Chita brewing industry began to decline gradually. Fushimi(Kyoto Prefecture) started to develop rapidly in the 1890's and shaped its fairly wellknown brewing area, comparable to Nada, by the 1910's. Although these are examples of a psontaneous growth, we can point out that the sake brewing industry was regulated and controlled by the Shogunate and then by the Meiji government. In the Tokugawa era, the Shogunate controlled the industry by means of the brewing license system to adjust rice prices to a certain standard, because rice was a principal source of the government revenue. In the Meiji era, the sake tax had an important place in the Meiji government's revenue, next to the land tax. We may conclude from all the papers in this issue that the sake brewing industry played an essntial part in the rapid development of the traditional industry and hence in the process of modernization of Japan.

View full abstract

The breweries in Nada were always a leader of sake brewing industry in Japan, for it was they who sent sake to Edo in the Tokugawa period and to all over the country in the Meiji period. The purpose of this paper is to explain the function of sake brewing industry in Nada and to compare the breweries in Nada with those in Chita and Fushimi. We will attempt to answer the following questins. (1) How did the Nada brewers proceed with the transition from Tokugawa to Meiji? (2) Why did the sake brewing industry arise in Nada? (3) What, technologically, was the factor in the successful development of the industry in Nada? (4) How did the Nada breweries cope with the difficulties in the last days of Tokugawa rule? (5) How did the Nada breweries modernize the sake brewing industry in the Meiji period? The whole process of development of sake brewing industry in Nada can be devided into eight periods: those of germination(1724-53), of growth(1754-85), of stagnation(1786-1803), of expansion(1804-31), of inaction(1832-70), of slack(1871-81), of convalescence(1882-96), and of further advance(1897-). In conclusion, the development of the sake brewing industry in Nada after the Meiji period was made possible by the breweries' efforts in two directions. First, the production was increased, and second, marketing was given a greater emphasis.

View full abstract

The Chita Peninsula was the second largest industrial area in sake brewing of Japan until the Meiji era. The output of Chita's sake and the quantity of its shipment to Edo were almost as large as those of the Nada area. But in the 1880's, Chita faced a crucial period under the Finance Minister MATSUKATA's deflation policy, and eventually became just one of the many, small local brewing areas. The brewing industry in Chita, as was the case in Nada, became prosperous in the early eighteenth century. Located between Osaka and Edo, the rich of the area invested in the shipment business. Moreover, the peninsula lacked fertile land, so that poor peasants had to work elsewhere outside the village: the sake brewing and shipment business for the Edo market gave them job opportunities. Owari, in which Chita was included, was a powerful han in the Tokugawa period, and supported Chita's sake businesses even when brewing in other areas was controlled by the Shogunate. This made the Chita sake industry prosperous. After the Meiji Restoration, the government removed restrictions on brewing. With the introduction of steamship and telegraph, Chita's sake shipment business was left behind. They also lost the guardian Owari han. Even worse, having sold by the same Tokyo wholesalers that dealt in goods produced in Nada, Chita's sake, was thought as a cheap substitute for Nada's and with the oversupply on the Tokyo market, it lost its demand in the Tokyo area. Furthermore, the government began to put a geavier tax on sake, and also on the quantity of brewing not on the wholesale price. The result was that breweries of cheap sake had to pay heavier taxes, and gradually the Chita brewing industry began to decline.

View full abstract

Fushimi sake brewing industry has a long history of development. A rather rapid development of the industry can be seen from the Momoyama era through the early Edo era. However, the activity of breweries started to decline after that perod. Especially during the period of the Meiji Revolution, such a tendency became much apparent. The industry must have started a new era with great difficulties. However, it started to develop quite rapidly again in the 1890's and had become a fairly big and famous brewing area comparable to Nada by the 1910's. It is interesting that the Fushimi sake brewing industry could develop so well while the other brewing areas were generally declining. In this paper, I shall attempt to investigate the process of the industry's adjustment to the enviromental change in business activity and the causes of the rapid development. Having reviewed the history of the industry, we can point out two major features: an importance of the tradition peculiar to Fushimi, and the vigorous, and also resolute, entrepreneurial activities supported by this tradition. We can assert from our study that the following two points are more important to the rapid development of a traditional industry than its quick modernization often acconpanied by a radical change; (i) research in the predecessor's experience. (ii) utilization, without hesitation, on a large scale the fruits of modernization in the general economic acitivity such as development of the railway system and media of advertisement, domestic production of bottles, and so on.

View full abstract

This article is concerned with the position of sake in the government's tax revenues in comparison with that of the land tax. We want to know why the revenue from the sake tax accounted for over 30%, and what problems it created. Indeed, one of the urgent tasks the Meiji government had to accomplish at an early stage was to built its financial fundamentals. When the government got into financial trouble, the authorities concerned relied mainly upon a revenue from the increased sake tax, not from the land tax, which was found difficult to increase. Great emphasis was placed on securing a revenue from sake, and this was paticularly marked marked under MATSUKATA's financial policy. This is why the sake conference was held in 1882. After the Sino-Japanese War, the importance of the sake tax in the government budget increased more than before, which prompted various debates. In this paper, a confrontation between advocates for ad valorem and for specific duties, as well as the question of if all the tax increases were actually passed on to the consumers, are given special attention. With such tax increases, adopted were measures to make home brewing illgal and to raise the minimum grewing limits. By the intensified efforts of the Tax Administrative Organization concerning these measures, the control over home brewing and illegal manufacture of sake became effective. After the Russo-Japanese War, the government set up a special tax commission at which a new tax system was discussed in the purpose of adjusting the system to various difficulties created by the wartime budget. In so doing, at the commission, various issues concerning the sake tax were taken up. This paper gives an account for the arguments put forward within the commision, and points out that there was a change in the tax structure due to an increase in taxation after the war. Since indirect taxes, of which the sake tax was the most important, increased gradually, revenues from them became greater than those from direct taxes. While the proportion of direct and indirect taxes was 51.6% and 48.4% respectively in 1905, it stood at 42.3% and 57.7% in 1912. Sake was the single largest consumption tax, accounting for 53.4% of the revenues from indirect taxes, or 28.3% of the total national tax revenues in 1909. The sake tax thus exemplifies a tendency to heavy taxation during the Meiji period.

View full abstract

This paper is a statistical survey of sake brewing industry between 1871 and 1935. I wished to point out the character of this industry mainly through macroscopic datum collected by the Taxation Bureau of the Ministry of Finance. Looking at time series data of sake production, we can find three conspicuous swings(1871〜86, 1887〜1903, 1904〜1931), but no upward trend through the whole period. On the other hand, the number of sake breweries increased until the early 1880's then took longterm declining trend. The size of the sake brewery was rather small: the average production was about 300〜500 koku(one koku was about 180 liters) which matched with the demand of a town or a few villages except large breweries in the Nada district. Regional distributions of sake production showed that there were three types-stabilized, declining and increasing regions. The first was a traditional sake brewing area. The third developed to substitute for the home-made after the prohibition of home brewing of sake when the sake tax was raised at the end of the 1980s. The second half of this paper concerns a simple analysis of influences of the sake tax on the price and the production of sake. The sake tax, like the land tax, was one of the most important sources of the government's revenue through this period. The tax rate increased from one yen koku in 1879 to forty yen in 1926. This rapid tax increase resulted in rising prices of sake. However, since such a rapid increase could not entirely be absorbed into prices of sake, the profit rate of breweries declined frequently, Of course, the relative price of sake compared with the wholesale price index rose five times in this period. A regression analysis is conducted to explain the size of prosuction with relative price and demand factors. The partial elasticity of the relative price showed a significantly nagative value and that of national consumption was significantly plus. We may conclude therefore that the rapid increase of the sake tax forced the relative price of sake to increse so that the demand and production of sake were suppressed despite a growing level of the nation's consumption per se.

View full abstract