La Révolution industrielle des régions du Japon

This book is the French translation of my book Chihō kara no sangyō kakumei (Japan’s industrial revolution from the regions) (2010, The University of Nagoya Press). In it, I re-evaluate the place and role of Japan’s regional economies in the unfolding of the country’s industrial revolution from two perspectives: (1) the mechanisms of regional economic revitalization and (2) changes in regional economic structures. During the Meiji era, when the market economy began its development and the flow of information between regions was still limited, relationships of trust between economic actors were built on face-to-face relationships and became a source of competitive advantage. Furthermore, in that era, regions with dense human relationships due to communal and blood ties had a comparative advantage over urban centers, where social relations were characterized by a high degree of anonymity. Such local, face-to-face relationships were a factor in the rapid rise of modern industries and the advancement of the industrialization in Japan. I call this development, a feature of Japan’s industrialization, “industrialization from local.”
 
This period of rapid modern industrialization saw a boom in the establishment of companies, also known as the “enterprise boom.” Japan during the Meiji era still did not have completely independent control of its foreign trade and industrial development, and the government was afraid that dependence on foreign capital would lead to colonialization. Policymakers at the time thus de facto shut down the introduction of foreign capital. Companies thus needed a system to concentrate domestic capital, and the enterprise boom took the form of the rise of joint-stock companies. Important indicators for observing the development of Japan’s industrial revolution included where companies were established, how many of them were established, and their market capitalization.
 
Accordingly, I first re-evaluate the role of regions in Japan in the early stages of the industrialization by focusing on the countrywide enterprise boom.
 
Next, I use case studies to examine the role of regions in Japan’s industrial revolution, focusing on trends among various regional economic actors that drove the enterprise boom. Here I focus on three conditions: (1) the existence of core economic actors, (2) the formation of human networks inside and outside regions, and (3) the sharing of an ideology related to regional industrialization. Firstly, I examine as case studies Miike county in Fukuoka Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture to shed light on the relationships between actors including local administrators, politicians, and entrepreneurs, and discuss the conditions for regional development of enterprises. Second, I conduct a case study of the Hiromi family in Sennan county, Osaka prefecture, to examine investment activities by local wealthy families and trends in actors supplying capital for regional industrialization. Furthermore, I discuss the entrepreneur Yasukawa Keiichiro in the Chikuho area of Fukuoka prefecture to examine multilayered human networks inside and outside a region in the growth of local zaibatsu.
 
I also examine changes in the position of regional economies as the industrial revolution advanced from the “regional era” to the “urban era.” I focus on electric power companies as actors responsible for the “urban era.” They created two urban markets—the capital market and the electricity market—as they laid the groundwork for urban industrialization. I analyze this process using Tokyo and surrounding regions as case studies. I found that rapid urban economic growth at the end of the Meiji era, including the formation of urban industrial zones, resulted in the relative decline of the position of regions in the regional economic structures.
 
It is my quiet hope that the mechanisms of regional economic revitalization in the Meiji era explained in this book will provide a hint for current regional revitalization efforts, which continue to hard struggle today.
 

(Written by NAKAMURA Naofumi, Professor, Institute of Social Science / 2021)