Review of Junko Watanabe, Sangyō Hatten, Suitai no Keizai-shi—“10-dai bō” no Keisei to Sangyō Chousei (The Economic History of Industrial Development and Decline: The Formation and Industrial Readjustment of the Cotton Industry’s “Big 10”)

Abstract

This volume is unusual in that it considers industrial stagnation and decline from the point of view of industrial structural adjustment. It is well known that cotton manufacturing was, along with silk, a leading industry in pre-World War II Japan, but as the author records, the industry saw its peak in the 1930s, and aside from a brief uptick during the postwar recovery era, underwent long-term stagnation and decline. Managers, workers, and policy-makers in the Japanese cotton industry were, however, well aware of the experience of Lancashire’s cotton industry, whose decline preceded that of Japan’s, and sought to avoid following in its footsteps. It was in that spirit that the cotton industry undertook its first large-scale industrial readjustment, the historical process of which is described in this volume.