A Study of Water-power Utilization before the Industrial Revolution in Japan

Abstract

Generally speaking, as Japan is a rainy and mountainous country, she is blessed with abundant water-power resources, which are now considerably exploited for generation of electricity. But before the Industrial Revolution, to be exact before 1892 when the first hydroelectric-power station was built in Japan, water-power had been used only on a small scale by water-mills scattered throughout the country.The author, who is studying water-power utilization in Japan from a standpoint of historical geography, recently found one rare old list of water-mills of Nara Prefecture, which had been compiled from the official investigation in 1881, and may be called “the census of water-mill”. The items of investigation are as follows:(1) the name of site where a water-mill was situated, (2) the name of stream or ditch on which a water-mill was constructed, (3) the date of construction, (4) the name and address of the owner, (5) uses (…e.g. rice-cleaning, flour-milling, oil-pressing, cotton-ginning, spinning and the rest), (6) distinction between commercial and private use, (7) the diameter of water-wheel.This list, containing 556 water-mills which existed in Nara Prefecture in that year, tells us, through these items, the distribution of water-mills, the purpose of water uses, the degree and the process of water-power utilization and so forth. As the first part of the author's analysis, the distribution and the process of construction of those water-mills were studied (The Faculty of Letters of Nara Women's University: Annual Report of Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. IX, 1965). In this second article, the variety of functions of these 556 water-mills is discussed.Most of these water-mills-393 of the total-were used for rice-cleaning, and this fact means that rice-cleaning was the main purpose of water-power utilization in those days. They scattered every sixth village on an average, gathering in some villages and dispersing in others. In Nara Basin, where the yield of rice was abundant but the sites of water-mills were restricted, they were owned by specified people and were used for business. While on Yamato Plateau, where the outturn of rice was not so much as that of Nara Basin, but the water-mills were distributed densely, they were jointly owned by villagers and were employed in rotation for private use.Other water-mills were used for the manufacturing of special products which were manufactured at that date in Nara Prefecture. Materials of some groceries, such as Japanese vermicelli and frozen bean curd, were prepared by these water-mills, and rape oil or cotton-seed oil were also pressed by them. Cotton-ginning and spinning also asked water for these motive power.