The development of the Fukui silk weaving district was curious because it became the largest industrial district of habutae, or plain silk, fabric production in Japan within a decade after it began operations in the late 1880s. Initially, the production of habutae rapidly spread geographically...

This study finds that the process of evolutionary development of the Kiryu weaving district in Japan from 1895 to 1930 can be divided into the two phases, i.e., Smithian growth based on the inter-firm division of labor using hand looms and Schumpeterian development based on factory system using...

The production of simple silk fabric, called habutae or habutai, expanded rapidly from 1890 to the end of the 1910s in Fukui prefecture, and it was exported to Europe and the U.S. Habutae was initially woven by hand looms in cottage enterprises and, hence, its production was labor intensive. It...