明治初期における米綿移植の挫折

概要

論文の詳細を見る
In the early Meiji period, the Japanese government embarked on a project to cultivate American cotton as part of its industrial promotion program. The project was, however, unsuccessful. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the causes of its failure. Earlier studies have concluded that the attempt to transplant the cotton itself was unsuccessful as well as the project as a whole, mainly because of 'the dominance of small-scale farming' in Japan or the 'backwardness' of Japanese agriculture. However, since there is evidence that in some areas farmers actually succeeded in rearing American cotton, the 'supply side' cannot have been the decisive factor. This paper takes into account the 'demand side', focusing on how American cotton was handled by cotton growers and processors. There was a deep concern on the part of the growers that the raw cotton would not sell unless the government was willing to buy it up. At the same time, the processors complained that long stapled American cotton was unsuited to processing machines built for the short stapled Japanese variety. Thus, the major cause of the failure was that American cotton was unable to find a market in Japan at the time.
社会経済史学会の論文
2000-11-25