【開催報告】グローバル経済史研究部会（5月12日）/ Global Economic History Seminar on May 12th

講演者

氏名：ジャネット・ハンター

所属：LSE

資格：Professor Emerita of Economic History

経歴：こちらからご確認ください

開催概要

開催日時：　2026年5月12日（火）15時05分－16時45分
開催方法：　早稲田大学早稲田キャンパス3号館4階401教室およびオンライン（Zoom）

講演報告

講演タイトル：Mobilising Human Resources to Build a Communications Network: Another Dimension of Japan’s Labour Intensive Industrialisation?
講演概要：My presentation will focus on workforce strategies in Japan’s government-run informational infrastructure (post, telegraph and telephone) and its adjunct services in the decades up to the Pacific War. I show that this area of infrastructure provision was characterised both by very large numbers of employees and by a huge diversity of the tasks undertaken, offering further evidence of the existence of ‘labour-intensive’ growth outside the manufacturing sector. The growth of the labour force in post and telecommunications was facilitated by specific labour-absorbing institutions, that is, formal or informal institutions designed to mobilise or incentivise large numbers of employees. The government-run communications system in effect depended for its growth and development on labour strategies and labour-absorbing institutions analogous to those often associated with manufacturing development. The evidence also suggests that the institutions that evolved were closely associated with a gradual improvement in the quality of labour and its ability to interact with rapidly changing needs and technologies.