Recent studies have shown that economic development based on industrial districts or clusters is common not only in the Western nations but also among many developing countries, as Marshall might have anticipated. Similarly, in the development process of modern Japan, many industrial districts...

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...

This study investigates the market for traditional dress in Japan in the second half of the 20th century. The textile industry has been regarded as a gdecliningh or mature industry in Japan since around the 1970s, and imports from developing countries with lower wages have increased rapidly....

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...

This paper explores the process of the institutionalizing technical education in modern Japan. In particular, this research attempts to elucidate why people in local weaving districts needed such educational institutions and how it is related with the introduction of western technology. This...