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Silks by Sea: Trade, Technology, and Enterprise in China and Japan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Lillian M. Li
Lillian M. Li
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Swarthmore College
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Abstract

Although East Asia's silk trade with the West stretched far back into antiquity, the middle and later years of the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable growth in the European and American demand for silk. This imparted a tremendous impetus to the Chinese and Japanese industries. For some eighty years, from the 1850s through the 1930s, trade flourished until the coming of synthetic fibers and world war curtailed its growth. The rise of so large an international business obviously had a significant impact on these countries, one that was particularly profound in the case of Japan. When the upsurge in trade began, both China and Japan were at roughly comparable stages in their economic development, but when the trade ended with the onset of war, it was Japan, not China, which had emerged as one of the leading industrial nations of the world. While few would contend that silk alone, however important, accounted for this differing course of national development, the dissimilar paths followed by the Chinese and Japanese silk industries not only reflected many themes characteristic of business enterprise in those countries but also typified their divergent national experience during this dramatic era of economic growth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2: East Asian Business History , Summer 1982 , pp. 192 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982

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References

1 A critique of the Western stimulus, Chinese response approach may be found in Cohen, Paul A., “Ch'ing China: Confrontation with the West, 1850–1900,” in Crowley, James B., ed., Modern East Asia: Essays in Interpretation (New York, 1970), 29–61.Google Scholar The modernization approach to modern Japanese history finds its fullest expression in a series of conference volumes put out by Princeton University Press. The introductory volume is Jansen, Marius B., ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (Princeton, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar A sharp attack on the modernization approach is made by John W. Dower in his introduction to the Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Works of E.H. Norman (New York, 1975), 8–102. Vogel's, Ezra F.Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has attracted a great deal of attention for emphasizing the superiority of Japanese management techniques over American techniques.

2 Perhaps the most notable of the “cultural” explanations is Bellah, Robert N., Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-industrial Japan (Glencoe, Ill., 1957)Google Scholar, which in effect finds a counterpart to the Protestant ethic in Japanese religion and thought. Economic historians have used the silk industry to ask theoretical questions about the origins of capitalism in Japan. Some stress the leading role of the government and big business in developing the silk trade, while others stress the importance of grass-roots initiatives. The leading proponents of the former view are Ishii Kanji (see below, n. 8), and his professor, Kazuo, Yamaguchi, ed., Nihon sangyō kinyūshi kenkyū: seishi kinyūhen (Tokyo, 1966).Google Scholar The leading proponent of the latter view is Yagi Haruo. See, for example, his Nihon kindai seishigyō no seiritsu—Nagano-ken Okaya seishigyōshi (Tokyo, 1960).

3 Silk Association of America, Annual Report, 1919, p. 706; 1906, p. 69; 1913, p. 36; and 1914, p. 15. Markham, Jesse W., Competition in the Rayon Industry (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In fact, during the 1920s and 1930s, the consumption of silk in the United States increased steadily, even as rayon gained great popularity, See textile consumption figures in Sen'i kōgyō (Chōki keizai tōkei, vol. 11), comp. Fujino Shōzaburō et al. (Tokyo, 1979), 144 and 311. See also Table 3.

4 Yang, Tuan-liu, Hou, Hou-pei et al., comps., Statistics of China's Foreign Trade during the Last Sixty-five Years (Nanking, 1931), 41Google Scholar, and Hsiao, Liang-lin, China's Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 109–111.Google Scholar I have deducted Hsiao's “Raw Silk, Miscellaneous” from his totals for “Total Raw Silk” to make the latter consistent with Yang and Hou's figures for the earlier period. I have converted piculs to kilograms. 1 picul=60 kilograms.

5 Allen, G.C., A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, 867–1937 (London, 1946), 172.Google Scholar 1 kwan or kan=3.75 kilograms.

6 Data for China from Li, Lillian M., China's Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World, 1842–1937 (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Table 9, and Liang-lin Hsiao, China's Foreign Trade Statistics, 24, 109–111. For Japan, see Hideki, Takisawa, Nihon shihon shugi to sanshigyō (Tokyo, 1978), 79.Google Scholar

7 Based on data provided by Union des Marchands de Soie de Lyon, Statistique de la production de la soie en France et à l'étranger, 1880–1928 annual. Actual percentages for China and Japan may have been even higher since this set of data compares Chinese and Japanese trade to European and other output figures.

8 C.F. Remer, an economist, observed that “Chinese raw silk is either excellent or rather poor in quality…. Japanese raw silk is of more uniform quality, but the best Chinese silk is said to be superior to the Japanese product.” The Foreign Trade of China (Shanghai, 1926), 140. Kanji, Ishii, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki (Tokyo, 1972), 41Google Scholar; and Huber, Charles Joseph, The Raw Silk Industry of Japan (New York, 1929), 31Google Scholar, provide these trade statistics.

9 China, Maritime Customs, Reports and Returns of Trade, annual until 1920; after 1920, Quarterly Trade Returns. These data are summarized in Table 15, Chapter III of Li, China's Silk Trade. Data for Canton can also be found in “Canton Exports of Raw Silk and Silk Waste in 1927,” Chinese Economic Journal 2:6 (June 1928), 529–532.

10 Lockwood, William W., The Economic Development of Japan, expanded edition (Princeton, 1968), 94.Google Scholar For opinions of other economists, see, for example, Shinohara, Miyohei, “Economic Development and Foreign Trade in Pre-War Japan,” in Cowan, C.D., ed., The Economic Development of China and Japan (London, 1964), 227Google Scholar; and Baba, Masao and Tatemono, Masahiro, “Foreign Trade and Economic Growth in Japan: 1858–1937,” in Klein, Lawrence and Ohkawa, Kazushi, eds., Economic Growth: The Japanese Experience since the Meiji Era (Homewood, Illinois, 1968), 162–182.Google ScholarHemmi, Kenzō, “Primary Exports and Economic Development: The Case of Silk,” in Ohkawa, Kazushi et al., eds., Agriculture and Economic Growth: Japan's Experience (Princeton, 1970), 308.Google Scholar The final point is made by Lockwood, 370–378.

11 Li, China's Silk Trade, 100–102; and Shinohara, “Economic Development,” 226, compiled from Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce and Ministry of Finance statistics. Domestic consumption of silk in Japan also expanded markedly in these years. See Sen'i kōgyō, 142.

12 The following discussion is summarized from Chapter I of Li, China's Silk Trade.

13 The Silk Association of America and the Shanghai International Testing House, comp., A Survey of the Silk Industry of Central China (Shanghai, 1925), 8–9.

14 Kenzō Hemmi stresses the importance of constant technological improvement in maintaining the relative profitability of mulberry as opposed to other crops in Japan, “Primary Product Export,” 318–321. Since the Meiji era, the yields of silk from cocoons have more than doubled in Japan. Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter I. In fact, the data in Heng-li, Ch'en, Pu Nung-shu yen-chiu (Peking, 1958)Google Scholar, strongly suggest a steady decline in yields from the late Ming to the 1950s.

15 These developments are more extensively discussed in Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter IV.

16 Based on figures from Fong, H.D., “China's Silk Reeling Industry,” Monthly Bulletin on Economic China (Nankai Institute of Economics), VII: 12 (December 1934), 491, Table V.Google Scholar

17 In 1925, 81 per cent of the cocoon output of Kiangsu was sold to filatures, whereas only 18 per cent of the Chekiang output was. See The Silk Association of America, A Survey of the Silk Industry, 5–6, 93.

18 Tomoo, Suzuki, “Shinmatsu Minsho ni okeru minzoku shihon no tenkai katei: Kanton no seishigyō ni tsuite,” Tōyō shigaku ronshū VI (1960), 47–49Google Scholar; Imperial Maritime Customs, Decennial Reports, 1882–1891, and 1892–1901 as reproduced in Min-hsiung, Shih, The Silk Industry in Ch'ing China, tr. by Sun, E-tu Zen (Center for Chinese Studies, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1976), 17.Google Scholar

19 Duran, Leo, Raw Silk: A Practical Handbook for the Buyer, 2nd ed. (New York, 1921), 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howard, Charles Walter and Buswell, K.P., A Survey of the Silk Industry of South China (Hong Kong, 1925), 144.Google Scholar

20 Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, comp. Yamakawa shuppansha (Tokyo, 1965), XI, 91, 278; also Haruo, Yagi, “Seishigyō,” in Nihon sangyōshi taikei: Sōron hen (Tokyo, 1961), I, 223Google Scholar; and also Jitsuya, Fujimoto, Nihon sanshigyōshi (Tokyo, 1933), I, 147–179Google Scholarpassim. Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, XI, 50–51.

21 The sericultural manuals in the early Tokugawa period were largely based on Chinese works, but those of the mid-Tokugawa period were often based on Japanese technological innovations. Hoshimi, Uchida, Nihon bōshoku gijitsu no rekishi (Tokyo, 1960), 54–55.Google Scholar The names used here are those of current prefectures. Traditionally, öshu corresponded roughly to Fukushima, Joshu to Gumma, and Shinshu to Nagano. A summer crop was developed in Nagano in the 1830s. Nihon sanshigyō taikei, comp. Tōdai shuppansha (Tokyo, 1961), V, 186. For discussion of other Tokugawa technological advances, see Yagi Haruo, “Seíshigyō,” 240; and Uchida Hoshimi, Nihon bōshoku gijitsu no rekishi, 57–66. Nihon sanshigyo taikei, IV, 260–261, and Yagi Haruo, “Seishigyō,” 227.

22 For a description in English of entrepreneurial activity in Saitama-ken, see Chambliss, William Jones, Chiaraijima Village: Land Tenure, Taxation, and Local Trade, 1818–1884 (Tucson, Arizona, 1965), 17–22.Google Scholar Regarding workshop production, see, Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, XII, 60. On the Tomioka factory, see Keishi, Ohara, Japanese Trade and Industry in the Meiji-Taisho Era (Tokyo, 1957), 229–233Google Scholar; and Smith, Thomas C., Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan: Government Enterprise, 1868–1880 (Stanford, Calif., 1955), 58–61.Google Scholar

23 Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, XII, 226–229. Kazuko, Yoshida, “Meiji shoko no seishi gijitsu ni okeru dochaku to gairai,” Kagakushi kenkyū, 11:16 (Spring, 1977), 19Google Scholar, and Akira, Ebato, Sanshigyō no keizai chirigakuteki kenkyū (Tokyo, 1969).Google Scholar Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 243–249. Yagi Haruo, “Seishigyō,” 240, notes that the Japanese technique was yet unknown in Europe or China. In Kiangnan, rereeled silk did not become an important export item until the 1910s. Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki, 57–83. His analysis of the financing of the silk industry is based on the difference between these two types of silk, which he terms Type I and Type II. See note 42 below.

24 Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, XII, 399–401. Some Japanese filatures also used electric power. See Sen'i kōgyō, 179–180. Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki, 88; Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 275–276. Japanese figures for 1900 and 1925 based on output data in Sen'i kōgyō, 294–295, which does not include waste silk. According to Nihon sen'i sangyōshi, comp. Nihon sen'i kyogikai (Osaka, 1958), I, 942, only 75 per cent of total output in 1925 was machine-reeled if waste silk is included. For export data, see Nihon boeki seiran, comp. Tōyō keizai shimposha (reprint, Tokyo, 1975), 53–55; and also Sen'i kōgyō, 308. Regarding the small-scale character of the Japanese industry, see, Huber, Raw Silk Industry, 42.

25 For Japan, see pp. 41–42, and map (end fold-out) in Huber, Raw Silk Industry, and also Sen'i kōgyō 139. For China, see Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter IV. In the Republican period, wild silk, known as Tussah, from Shantung and Manchuria, became extremely popular for export. The provinces of Szechwan and Hupei also produced a substantial amount of raw silk, but mostly inferior yellow silk for the domestic market.

26 Seni kōgyō, 306; and Lockwood, Economic Development of Japan, 45, for Japan in general. Data for Yamanashi prefecture is from Yamanashi-ken tÒkeisho and has been generously shared with me by Professor Richard J. Smethurst, who is preparing a manuscript on tenancy disputes in that area. For data on the value of sericultural products in total agricultural production, see Umemura Mataji et al., comps., Noringyō (Chōkikeizai tōkei, vol. 9) (Tokyo, 1966), 146–149. For data on mulberry acreage, see Seni kōgyō, 306–307. Data on China from Chapter V, Table 25 of Li, China's Silk Trade.

27 Hirschmeier, Johannes, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes this point, as do others. The continuing strength of the rural sector in the Japanese silk industry, even into the twentieth century, is at least one reason to be cautious about adopting the commonly held view that Japan had evolved a “dual economy” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which the traditional-rural sector of the economy experienced a declining rate of growth, while the modem-urban sector advanced quickly. This idea is best expressed by Ohkawa, Kazushi and Rosovsky, Henry, in “A Century of Japanese Economic Growth,” in Lockwood, William W., ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965), 47–92Google Scholar, where they characterize the period 1906–1930 as one in which a differential structure was created.

28 For example, in Gumma. Nihon sanshigyō taikei, IV, 277–278.

29 For example, in Yamanashi. See Masanori, Nakamura, “Seishigyō no tenkai to jinushisei.” Shakai keizei shigaku 32 (1967), 46–71.Google Scholar

30 Allen, Short Economic History, 110. On the low wages of filature employees in Yamanashi, see Tussing, Arlon, “The Labor Force in Meiji Economic Growth: A Quantitative Study of Yamanashi Prefecture,” Journal of Economic History, XXVL;1 (March 1966), 70–96.Google Scholar

31 The Silk Association of America, A Survey of the Silk Industry, 2; Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 276. Yoshida Kazuko, “Meiji shoko no seihi gijitsu ni okeru dochaku to gairai,” 17–18. Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyoshi bunseki, 422ff.

32 Smith, Thomas C., “Pre-Modem Economic Growth: Japan and the West,” Past and Present, 60 (August 1973), 158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The shift from urban-centered marketing to town and village-centered commerce in the cotton industry is described in Hauser, William B., Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade (Cambridge, England, 1974), Chaps. VI and VII.Google Scholar

33 Haruo, Yagi, Nihon keizaishi gaisetsu (Tokyo, 1974), 217Google Scholar; also Yamaguchi Kazuo, Nihon sangyō kinyūshi kenkyū, 10–11. Nihon sanshigyō taikei, IV, 280–283; and Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 244–249 and 292–294. Also, Huber, Raw Silk Industry, 17.

34 Allen, G.C. and Donnithorne, Audrey G., Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development (London, 1954), 68.Google Scholar The most famous silk cooperative in China is well-described by Hsiao-t'ung, Fei, in his Peasant Life in China (London, 1939).Google Scholar

35 chūōkai, Sanshigyō dōgyōkumiai, comp., Shina sanshigyō taikan (Tokyo, 1929), 235–236Google Scholar, shows that the average size of filatures in the Kiangnan area was 261 basins. The ones in Canton tended to be larger. The institution of the cocoon hong is discussed in Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter VI.

36 Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter VI. Taikei Nihonshi sōsho, XII, 56–57.

37 Suzuki Tomoo, “Shinmatsu Minsho,” 62. Also, Bastid, Marianne, “Le Développement des filatures de soie modernes dans la province du Guangdong avant 1894,” The Polity and Economy of China: The Late Professor Yuji Muramatsu Commemoration Volume (Tokyo, 1975), 175–188Google Scholar, discusses the issue ornative capital.

38 There is debate among scholars about whether the scarcity of capital invested in modem enterprises was due to an absolute scarcity, or to the unwillingness of individuals to risk investment of their wealth in new enterprises. On middlemen, see, Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter V. Eiichi, Horie, Shina sanshigyō ni okeru torihiki kankō (Tokyo, 1941), 129–131.Google ScholarShina shōbetsu zensho, comp. by Tōa dōbunkai (Tokyo, 1917–1920), XIII, 600–601; XV, 735–736.

39 T'ung-ch'un, Tseng, Chung-kuo ssu-yeh (Shanghai, 1933), 96–97Google Scholar; and Buchanan, Ralph E., The Shanghai Raw Silk Market (New York, 1929), 24–28.Google Scholar

40 Shina shōbetsu zensho, XV, 685–688. Howard and Buswell, A Survey of the Silk Industry, 121; Li, China's Silk Trade, Chapter VI. Suzuki Tomoo, “Shinmatsu Minsho,” 62.

41 Buchanan, The Shanghai Raw Silk Market, 7. Ssu-ping, Yueh, Chung-kuo ts'an-ssu (Shanghai, 1935), 110–111, 201–202.Google Scholar

42 See Hauser, Economic Institutional Change, 47–48, on the abolition of the kabu-nakama during the Kansei reforms; and Taikei Nihon sōsho, XII, 55, 240. On peasants, see Taikei, XI, 91, and XII, 55, 240; on ex-samurai, see Ibid., XII, 191–194, and Hirschmeier, Origins, 93–94. On differences between Nagano and Gumma, see, Yoshida Kazuko, “Meiji,” 19. Regional differences axe also explored in Ebato Akira, Sanshigyō no keizai chirigakuteki kenkyū, On vested interests, see Yagi Hamo, Nihon kindai seishigyō no seiritsu—Nagano-ken Okaya seishigyoshi, 10–11. According to Ishii Kanji's analysis, the new districts produced what he calls Type I silk, factory-reeled silk of high quality. See Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki, 62.

43 Yamaguchi Kazuo., Nihon sangyō kinyūshi kenkyū, 8–9 and 25–34. Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki, 373, 413. Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 276–281.

44 Yagi Haruo, “Seishigyō,” 233. Yamaguchi Kazuo, Nikon sangyō, 10.

45 Yokohama shishi (Tokyo, 1961), IIIA, 633. Maeda Masana and Kawaze Hideharu both were active in the direct export movement after serving in France as diplomats. Hoshino Chōtarō of Gumma and Hasegawa Hanshichi were important rural leaders. On exports, see, Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki, 64; Yagi Haruo, Nihon keizaishi gaisetsu, 282–283; Yamaguchi Kazuo, Nihon sangyō, 10–11; Nakamura Masanori, “Seishigyō no tenkai,” 56; Ishii Kanji Nihon sanshigyōshi, 424–425. On Katakura, see Allen and Donnithorne, Western Enterprise, 227.

46 Ohara Keishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 262–63; Kenzō Hemmi, “Primary Product Exports,” 316; and Yamaguchi Kazuo, Nihon sangyō, 514–623 passim. Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi, 413. Yagi Haruo, Nihon keizaishi gaisetsu, 260; Kenzō Hemmi, “Primary Product Exports,” 316. Patrick, Hugh T., “Japan, 1868–1914,” in Cameron, Rondo E., ed., Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization (New York, 1967), 279.Google Scholar Hemmi, “Primary Product Exports,” 316, estimates on the basis of Yamaguchi's data, that bank loans amounted to 25–30,000,000 yen in 1907, a year when sericultural production amounted to 192,000,000 yen. Patrick, “Japan,” 249, feels that government leadership in developing the banking system has been exaggerated. He prefers to stress the importance of private initiative.