Vol.77 No.3 (2025)
Contents
Article
MIYAKE Gendai
Expansion of Local Traders to the Asian Continent and their Human Network in Modern Tsuruga: A Case Study of the Hakase and Kimura Families (209)
2024 Annual Review
A Survey of Geographical Studies in Japan, 2024 (235)
Book Reviews (366)
Meeting Reports (376)
Miscellany (391)
Notice (395)
Program of the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Human Geographical Society of Japan (398)
Abstract
Expansion of Local Traders to the Asian Continent and their Human Network
in Modern Tsuruga: A Case Study of the Hakase and Kimura Families
MIYAKE Gendai
Graduate Student, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
This paper describes the Hakase and Kimura families as examples of traditional and emerging traders in Tsuruga, a major port city on the modern Sea of Japan coast. The goal is to examine how small and mediumsized local merchants, in contrast to local zaibatsu, entrepreneurs and wealthy families of great renown, were able to expand their businesses to the continent, focusing on their human networks. The development of the trading business of the two families revealed merchants who had stagnated, but recovered their business; and merchants who came from outside the region, and saw their business grow. The background to expansion of both families to the continent included human networks that made cooperation possible. These included those based on trust and prestige gained through activities for both private and public benefit within and outside the local community, and those built through blood relatives and work experience in the Opposite Shore Area of the Sea of Japan. The broad human networks formed within Imperial Japan through relations with economic entities inside and outside the region enabled small and medium-sized local traders to continue and expand their trading operations across the coast by securing human, financial and material resources.
Key words: Imperial Japan, Sea of Japan area, trader, expansion to the continent, human networks, Tsuruga