The purpose of this paper is to consider the locational process of banks in order to make clear the regional structure of the Kanto District during Meiji period.
Banks played an important role in the process of modernization in Japan. That is, they were established in the stage when industrial and commercial capitals had not yet sufficiently been accumulated. For this reason, they were merely loan offices rather than commercial banks. These loan offices or banks were closely related with local industries and had exerted their impacts on the characterization of regional structures.
For the method of the present study, the writer examined both the head offices and branches of banks and compared them for 1887, 1897, and 1907 in terms of their spatial distributions and temporal changes. In that case, a central place system as an effective framework of analysis for the regional structures was related to the locational process of banks. Now, in order to find the central place system, the writer chiefly used the data of number of merchants as of 1907. As population size of urban centers showed only slight change in general for the period 1868-1907, so the data for 1907 might stand good for the remaining years of the period.
The results obtained are summarized as follows: There existed various types of locational process of banks due to special circumstances in the advancement of capitalism in Japan and also to differences of regional conditions.
1) The heierarchical effect of urban centers was observed on the locational process of banks in Japan during Meiji period, although it was not always remarkably recognizable. That is, the location of head offices of banks and their branches tended to begin with the higher order of places and then with the lower order of places. But, both the vicinity of Tokyo and Yokohama and such central places with special functions as hot spring towns, port towns, mining and industrial towns, and so on, showed time lag in the locational process of banks as compared with that of the same order of places in other areas.
2) Those banks are classified into three groups on the basis of their characteristics, each of which shows different locational process from others. The first group, national banks were established mainly by former-samurais in urban centers that were formerly castle-towns, gradually grew in competition with other private banks and expanded their spheres of inluence. The second group, branches of small local banks were established by rich landowners and merchants in localized areas in various places throughout the Kanto district. Though rises and falls of small local banks were often repeated, a few banks grew and expanded the networks of their branches. And the third group, very large banks by the privileged merchants through Edo and Meiji periods and large merchants dealed in raw silk, were established in Tokyo and Yokohama and then developed their branches in the central cities of higher order such as prefectural seats and the textile districts.
3) Those three groups of banks mentioned above represented various locations under varied regional structures of industries. In the regions with less developed industries such as Ibaragi and Chiba prefectures, very large banks whose main offices were located in Tokyo and Yokohama established early their branches in the places of higher order and of intermediate order. As these very large banks exerted their dominant influences upon large local banks, the network of branches of the latter banks were hard to be developed. However, the branches of very large banks, which had their head offices in Tokyo and Yokohama, were established only in the central places of higher order or of intermediate order. Consequently, in the places of lower order and the lowest order, small local banks could establish their branches in their neighboring areas.
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