Spatial Institution of a Trade Association in a Modern Japanese Metropolis

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  • 近代日本の大都市における同業組合の制度と空間的スケール
  • キンダイ ニホン ノ ダイトシ ニ オケル ドウギョウ クミアイ ノ セイド ト クウカンテキ スケール

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Abstract

<p>    The purpose of this article is to investigate the role of urban industrial agglomeration during Japan's industrial revolution, focusing on the spatial institution of a conventional trade association based in a metropolis. <BR>    Recent studies on regional formation and reorganization during the industrial revolution have focused specifically on the role of intermediary organizations, such as trade associations. These studies clarify that the institutions of trade associations were vital to the development of the regional economy, which enabled traders and manufactures to take collective action and to regulate commodity transactions to avoid market failure. To explain the formation of local rural industries during the industrial revolution, these studies focus almost exclusively on examples of rural areas, whose spatial scales corresponded to prefectures or counties. However, it was not only the newly formed rural industrial districts that played a key role in the development of regional and national economies during the industrial revolution. Conventional commercial and industrial urban agglomerations, whose spatial scales corresponded to urban blocks, were equally vital. <BR>    This article examines the spatial institution of the pharmaceutical trade association in Osaka from the late 19th to early 20th century. This trade association originated in the Edo period pharmaceutical trade guild and maintained many of its predecessors' internal organizations and institutions. After 1868, the pharmaceutical trade association in Osaka gained legal grounds by the law of the country, which prohibited several feudal restrictions, such as the residential restriction in Kitasenba, an urban block of central Osaka, for members of the association. However, the association maintained several internal organizations that were not bound by the law, and thus were able to preserve several feudal regulations, including residential restrictions. <BR>    Therefore, although the geographic area that was subject to the official rules of the association corresponded to the county or prefecture, the practical use of the institutions of the association operated in an area that corresponded to the urban block of central Osaka.</p>

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