Studente of national banks in Japan have hitherto been concerned with the problem of who founded the banks and with classification of their types according to the founders. Actually the founders character was reflected, without doubt, upon bank management in the pioneer days, which makes it seem as if always valid to grasp the national banks on the basis of their types which were defined by the character of various founders. It is dangerous, however, to draw a conclusion before we have examined whether such early character was sustained through the developing Process of the national banks. This article intends to make up for the above mentioned defect in research through the analysis of the business reports of the Eighty-fifth National Bank in Kawagoe which was established in 1878 as the sole national bank in Saitama Prefecture. By comparing the managerial structure in the early days with that of the later days, the author elucidates its changing character and its development. It is positively made clear that though its initial business activities tended to be those of money-lending strongly defined by the founders' character it came to change in its character and developed into a modern bank as it was influenced by and responded to the Japanese capitalism. This analysis and the hitherto accumulated research of the national banks in Japan leads to the conclusion that in order to elucidate and classify the types and nature of the national banks it is necessary to add in our perspective 'types of development'; that is to say, we have to investigate how each national bank changed its initial character to transfigure into a full-fledged modern bank, responding to the growth and development of the Japanese capitalism. Those types of development are to be listed as follows: (1) Those national banks which were transforming into modern banks as early as in the later years of the first decade of the Meiji era. (2) Those national banks which began to emerge as modern banks in the period of rapid development of the Japanese capitalism in the later years of the second decade of the Meiji era. (The banks of this type are assumed to have been dominant.) (3) Those national banks which could not actively respond to the development of the Japanese capitalism and found it impossible to transforminto modern banks while they remained to be national banks. (4) Those national banks which were slow in changing its character from the initial one. (5) Those national banks which could not tide over the depression in the end of the first decade of the Meiji era and failed, or were absorbed or merged into other banks.

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