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Factory Legislation and Management Modernization during Japan's Industrialization, 1886–1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Koji Taira
Koji Taira
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, University of Illinois
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Abstract

Faced with a labor shortage at a crucial point in the industrialization of Japan, tradition-oriented businessmen reacted not by raising wages but by longing for the authority-ordered labor relations of the past. Given this situation, the Meiji government moved to improve working conditions through non-economic means. Professor Taira shows that the debate over proposed factory legislation, along with the coming-of-age of a new generation of entrepreneurs, produced a “conversion” to modern management among businessmen of the late-Meiji generation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1: Japanese Entrepreneurship , Spring 1970 , pp. 84 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1970

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References

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6 Quoted in Sumiya, Nihon chinrōdōshi ron, 319.

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8 For the proceedings of the first session of the council, see MBSS, 19–57.

9 Ibid., 46–47.

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11 Ibid., 55–56.

12 For an additional commentary on some of these entrepreneurs, see Taira, Koji, “The Dynamics of Industrial Relations in Early Japanese Development,” Labor Law Journal (July, 1962)Google Scholar; and Yamamura, Kozo, “The Founding of Mitsubishi: A Case Study in Japanese Business History,” Business History Review XLI (Summer, 1967)Google Scholar, and “A Re-examination of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (1868–1912),” Economic History Review XXI (April 1968).

13 Based on the recollections of En Kanai, one of the most active members of the third session. See Nihon rōdō undō shiryō (cited hereafter as NRUS), (Historical Materials on the Labor Movement in Japan), (Tokyo, 1968), III, 179.

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16 MBSS, especially 116–23.

17 Ibid., 118.

18 Ibid., 146–48.

19 Compiled under the supervision of Takao Tsuchiya (Tokyo, 1947).

20 NRUS (Tokyo, 1962), I, 647–48.

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34 Pyle. New Generation in Meiji Japan, 200.

35 Tsuchiya, Zoku nihon keiei rinenshi, 355–56.

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37 Yoshino, Michael Y., Japan's Managerial System (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).Google Scholar