Location of the Cotton Industry in Japan

Abstract

The author intends, in this article, to examine problems concerned with the formation of manufacturing regions, through analysis of changes in the location of the cotton industry, which has had an important position in the process of development of regional variations in the industrialization of Japan.The author thinks that examination of a single manufacturing industry is important, because it is the essential first step for the understanding of regional differences which is an object of the economic geography.It is impossible, however, to explain completely the formation of manufacturing regions in Japan only from the side of the cotton industry, which is a single manufacturing industry, it will be possible to explain the relationships between the cotton industry and other manufacturing industries from an historical viewpoint based on the wide scope of the national economy.In this paper the location of the cotton industry is discussed, because the author thinks that the role of the cotton industry was the most important at the earlier stage of capitalism in our country, and that through such an analysis problems of the development of manufacturing as a whole can be partly made clear.The four problems described in this paper are as follows;1) The location of the early cotton enterprises by the feudal clan governments, and the location of later factories by the Meiji government which took over the former ones.2) The trend towards the centralization of the big cotton factories in the Osaka area at about 1890 (in twenties of Meiji) as private enterprises.3) The simultaneous location of small cotton factories in the local districts.4) The establishment of the capitalistic big cotton industries combining both spinning and weaving processes, and the combination of the small cotton industries in the local districts.Fig. 1 The distribution of the cotton factories by water or steam power in 1886 (Meiji 19).Fig. 2 The distribution of the cotton factories in 1894 (Meiji 27).Fig. 3 The distribution of the cotton factories in 1902 (Meiji 35).Fig. 4 The combine of the main cotton spinning companies.In a later article, the author will examine the location of the cotton industry before the First World War when ten large companies monopolised the industry, which has not been dealt with in this paper.