午夜剧场

In April, I returned to the nostalgic Mita Hill. For the five years prior, I had been teaching in Fukuoka City. As someone interested in the production, distribution, and consumption of salt, as well as the salt monopoly system, I had frequently visited the Seto Inland Sea region—a major salt-producing area—since my graduate student days to conduct archival research. However, when I first started working in Fukuoka, I couldn't find any historical materials in the vicinity that piqued my interest. Nevertheless, I desperately wanted to write a paper using primary sources held locally. This is because doing so is an advantage for a history researcher working at a regional university.

History researchers specializing in the modern and contemporary eras make full use of databases and online archives, but because the usage fees are high, the universities that can afford to implement them are limited. However, being in an excellent research environment does not necessarily mean one can write an excellent paper. This is because the foundation of historical research lies in the painstaking excavation of primary sources. At regional universities, information about local historical materials that does not reach universities in Tokyo is often passed along by word of mouth. As a history researcher, there is no reason not to use this information. Therefore, based on information obtained from a colleague, I began researching historical materials in a suburb more than an hour away from Tenjin in central Fukuoka City by train and bus.

In the late Meiji period, Fukuoka Prefecture boasted a salt production volume second only to the prefectures along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, and until the early 1910s, the salt consumed for household use in Fukuoka City was primarily produced within the prefecture. The subject of my research was historical materials related to a small salt production company that produced such locally distributed salt during the 1890s and 1900s. A noteworthy characteristic of this company was that it engaged in the illicit manufacture and sale of salt under the salt monopoly system introduced in 1905. The cause was that the government set the purchase price of salt excessively low under the system. While illicit manufacture and sale under salt monopoly systems occurred in places like China and India in Asia, Japanese cases—where the frequency of occurrence in major production areas (the Seto Inland Sea region) was low—had not received much attention. However, these materials vividly illustrated the raw details of the process leading up to the salt company's involvement in illicit manufacture and sale, greatly advancing my research.

Historical materials are gathered on foot. Reconfirming the importance of this essential task for historical research was a valuable experience gained during my five years living in Fukuoka City. Now that I have moved to a campus in the big city overlooking Tokyo Tower, I want to take this to heart once again.