Establishment of the Woolen Textile Industry in the Bisai Area and the Development of the Textile Machinery Industry in Japan before 1935

<p>    The Bisai area in Aichi prefecture was the cotton fabrics producer in the Edo Period and the silk and cotton mixed fabrics producer in the Meiji Period. The area converted into the woolen fabrics (mainly serge) producing center in the latter half of the Taisho Period and the early Showa Period. The conversion into the serge producing center depended on positively introducing efficient quadruple width power looms for the serge by the main textile manufacturers in the Bisai area, and obtaining the top serge producer position in Japan. The import of the woolen products and the power looms from European countries sharply decreased owing to the First World War. Consequently, the people concerned with the wool trading and manufacturing started to explore the domestic production of the quadruple width power loom for wool. There were two factors that the Bisai area grew into the largest woolen textile producing center in Japan. One was the quick introduction of the domestically produced quadruple width power looms, copied from the foreign ones. The other was the organization of a “society for the research of the quadruple width woolen textile” by the people concerned with the wool trading and manufacturing who aimed for the improvement in woolen textile quality. <BR>    On the other hand the textile machine industry also developed quantitatively and qualitatively in the latter half of the Taisho and the early Showa Periods. The domestic production of the iron power loom and spinning machine proceeded in mainly Osaka Prefecture and Aichi Prefecture, and those textile machines were introduced into the many textile production areas in Japan. In this way Japan arrived at the stage that the textile industry and the textile machine industry developed complementarily. In Aichi Prefecture there were ironworks that made the first quadruple width power loom for wool in Japan. It was the usual understanding that the introduction of those power looms by the textile manufacturers caused the expansion of wool textile production and the formation of the wool producing center in the Bisai area. However, this paper shows the fact that the main textile manufacturers in the Bisai area introduced at the beginning were quadruple width power looms for wool produced by another ironworks in Osaka City, earlier than those made in Aichi. The author suspects that there was also a difference in the performance of those domestically produced looms that were poorer quality than the imported ones. This paper makes it clear that the establishment of the woolen textile production center in the Bisai area depended on not only the network among the weaving trade in Aichi Prefecture, but also the nationwide network among the textile machine traders and makers.</p>