Reviving the Kansai cotton industry: engineering expertise and knowledge sharing in the early Meiji period

Abstract

This article analyses the acquisition and application of new cotton spinning technologies in Japan in the early Meiji period, and the ways in which this knowledge helped to mobilise existing resources of human and financial capital. It focusses on the early development of three pioneering firms, the Hirano, Amagasaki and Settsu companies, all of which after 1918 became part of Dainihon Spinning, one of the ‘Big Three’ textile firms of prewar Japan. By looking at the ways in which these companies diffused technical and other expertise, secured finance, and addressed the problems that had confounded earlier initiatives, it shows how technological knowhow from outside the Osaka region was a key factor that enabled the mobilisation of the capital and expertise of business and personal networks in Kansai, and in the process rebuilt the region's traditional predominance in cotton production, laying the foundations for the industry's global competitiveness.