National Market and Local Market viewed from the Activities of Merchants -from the Tempo Era to the Second World War-

1. 我们对在大阪府海冢从事国内航运和大米、化肥贸易的广美家族保存的史料进行了6次调查。我们已经给主要的帐簿拍了照片，并把业务信函放进我们的专用信封里。分析了这些史料后，我们发现了许多有趣的事实。首先，海冢港在19世纪30年代之后作为大米和化肥的贸易中心而繁荣起来，但在19世纪80年代，由于轮船的不足，海冢港开始衰落。其次，19世纪90年代以后，随着Hiroumi家族改变了他们的交易方式，从委托销售转变为自己的账户销售，交易的回报下降了。第三，从19世纪80年代开始投资股份公司的广见家族，在20世纪10年代的经济繁荣时期加大了投资力度，以至于投资股票的收益超过了化肥贸易的收益。总之，我们发现德川时代的商人不仅发展了市场经济，而且为近代日本的股份公司提供了资金。

1. We have carried out investigations six times on the historical materials kept by the Hiroumi family who had been engaged in domestic shipping and trade in rice and fertilizer at Kaizuka in Osaka Prefecture. We have taken photographs of the main account books and put the business letters into our special envelopes.2. Having analyzed these historical materials, we found out many interesting facts. Firstly, Kaizuka Port, which prospered as a trading center for rice and fertilizer after the 1830s, began to decline in the 1880s because of the inadequateness for steamships. Secondly, the returns from the trade decreased after the 1890s as the Hiroumi family changed their way of trade from selling on commissions to selling on their own accounts. Thirdly, the Hiroumi family, who began to invest their money in the joint-stock companies in the 1880s, increased their investments during the boom in the 1910s so that the amount of the returns from the investments in the stocks overwhelmed those from the trade in fertilizer. In short, we found out the fact that the merchants grown in the Tokugawa Era not only developed the market economy but also financed the joint-stock companies in modern Japan.