明治期における工業化と在来的雇用関係の変化

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process that occurred during the period from the beginning of the Meiji era to Meiji 30 whereby customary relations between the employer and employees changed to those more suited to the age of industrialization. The interrelated development of middle and small scale merchants, the Mitsui Bank and the cotton spinning industry will be examined. At the beginning of the Meiji era, the government abolished the customary system of employer-employee relations in an attempt to change over to a modern labor management relations, that is from a traditional system determined by social position to a system based on contracted labor. This alone, however, did not lead to the establishment of more modern management relation. For example, it became extremely difficult for middle and small scal merchants who had formed the "guilds" (kabu-nakama) in the Edo period and who received the greatest shock that came with the abolition of the customary system, to control employees, and so they made a strong cry for the reinstatement of the old system. In reality there were many merchants who violated the government's regulations and continued to operate in the traditional manner. In Meiji 17, a revision was made that allowed only merchants involved in the production of major products to form associations of like industries. This led to the establishment of a number of such associations. As a result, the continuation customary practices was recognized, and employer-employee relations which had been in a turmoil to some extent regained stability. The cotton spinning industries are considered to be modern industries, but they continued to carry out traditional emploper-employee relations of the small-middle scale merchants of the Edo period. The cotton spinners also formed associations through which they were able to control over workers. Along with the advancement of industrialization, it became clear that it would not be possible to stabilize empIoyer-employee relations solely through strengthening controls of employees. At that time, the more stabilized employer-employee relations brought about by the Kanegafuchi Cotton Spinning Company as a result of their "Good Working Conditions Policy" came to attract attention. This policy was modelled after a similar policy directed toward white-collar employees by Nakamigawa Hikojiro of the Mitsui Bank. The policy of the Kanegafuchi Cotton Spinnig Company had a great impact on the cotton spinning industry which was attempting to stabilize employer-employee relations through the strengthening of regulations among companies and the control of workers. And in Meiji 29, a conflict arose between the Kanegafuchi Cotton Spinning Company and other cotton spinning companies. This developed into a major incident which shook the entire industrial world of Japan. This conflict can be seen as a struggle between "The old" and "The new". It might be said that for the cotton spinning industry this was a necessary step in the process of moving away from customary practices to management systems more appropriate to modern types of industry. After this, the more cooperative labor management practices of the "Japanese employment system" came to be used in the management of white-collor employees and blue-collar workers. This led to the period of "Familistic Labor Management".