百貨店における教育 : 店員訓練の近代化とその影響

The purpose of this study is to clarify the effect that the modernization of department store salesclerk training had on young salesclerks in the interwar period. Department stores were among the first to adopt modern management techniques, thus becoming the model for other businesses. Modern salesclerk training shortened the time necessary for youth to acquire sales skills through practical training, and started short-term courses on the department store and sales. Previous studies recognize the influence that the "method of organized cultural transmission" has had on department store salesclerk training. However, little attention has been given to the differentiation of continuing education in salesclerk training. The separation between these two kinds of training is important when considering the process of skill acquisition in order to become a salesclerk in Japan. This study considers salesclerk training at Shirokiya Department Store because Shirokiya actively sought to adopt new management techniques that influenced the differentiation of training in the interwar period. The first section considers continuing education in kimono fabric shops prior to 1920. Since the Edo period, apprentices learned to read and write from senior salesclerks and learned the trade through practical training. At the end of the nineteenth century, clerks began to receive continuing education from teachers hired by the shop. In-store training followed the traditional method that required a long period of practical training, although the organization of continuing education represented the introduction of modern methods. The second section presents the efficient salesclerk training that spread throughout department stores by the end of the 1920s. Previously, an apprentice became a regular salesclerk by acquiring experience over a long period. With the introduction of scientific management methods in the early 1910s, department stores changed their method of the salesclerk training. At Shirokiya by the end of the 1920s, apprentices became regular salesclerks after a brief period of instruction in standardized skills and knowledge of sales. As a result, young women who had worked for only a short time could be promoted to salesclerk. The third section describes in detail how department stores in the 1930s considered experience as an apprentice as less important. By this time, secondary school graduates were replacing higher primary school graduates as department store salesclerks. Department store promotion policies changed because the specialization of labor reduced available work for apprentices, and stores preferred the possibility of training secondary school graduates. Consequently, department stores entrusted general education to secondary education while improving the efficiency of salesclerk training.