A Quantitative History of Sake Brewing, 1871-1935

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  • 酒造業の数量史 明治-昭和初期 (日本における酒造業の展開 : 近世から近代へ)
  • 酒造業の数量史--明治-昭和初期
  • シュゾウギョウ ノ スウリョウシ メイジ ショウワ ショキ

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Abstract

This paper is a statistical survey of sake brewing industry between 1871 and 1935. I wished to point out the character of this industry mainly through macroscopic datum collected by the Taxation Bureau of the Ministry of Finance. Looking at time series data of sake production, we can find three conspicuous swings(1871〜86, 1887〜1903, 1904〜1931), but no upward trend through the whole period. On the other hand, the number of sake breweries increased until the early 1880's then took longterm declining trend. The size of the sake brewery was rather small: the average production was about 300〜500 koku(one koku was about 180 liters) which matched with the demand of a town or a few villages except large breweries in the Nada district. Regional distributions of sake production showed that there were three types-stabilized, declining and increasing regions. The first was a traditional sake brewing area. The third developed to substitute for the home-made after the prohibition of home brewing of sake when the sake tax was raised at the end of the 1980s. The second half of this paper concerns a simple analysis of influences of the sake tax on the price and the production of sake. The sake tax, like the land tax, was one of the most important sources of the government's revenue through this period. The tax rate increased from one yen koku in 1879 to forty yen in 1926. This rapid tax increase resulted in rising prices of sake. However, since such a rapid increase could not entirely be absorbed into prices of sake, the profit rate of breweries declined frequently, Of course, the relative price of sake compared with the wholesale price index rose five times in this period. A regression analysis is conducted to explain the size of prosuction with relative price and demand factors. The partial elasticity of the relative price showed a significantly nagative value and that of national consumption was significantly plus. We may conclude therefore that the rapid increase of the sake tax forced the relative price of sake to increse so that the demand and production of sake were suppressed despite a growing level of the nation's consumption per se.

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