The Twelve-Hour Turn: Mitsui’s Silk Mill Workers Paid for Privatization with Exhaustion

Sweatshops & Labor Exploitation3/5 wildness

The Twelve-Hour Turn: Mitsui’s Silk Mill Workers Paid for Privatization with Exhaustion

Tomioka Silk Mill under Mitsui & Co. / 1890s

When Mitsui & Co. purchased the government-owned Tomioka Silk Mill in September 1893 for 121,460 yen, the factory entered a more commercially aggressive phase. Mitsui built a second women’s reeling factory, installed newer machinery, and maintained a dormitory, but the new regime also lengthened working hours dramatically. Summer shifts reached twelve hours, while winter shifts lasted nine hours. The elementary school established under the earlier government administration remained open, yet many workers were too exhausted after their shifts to attend. Around half of the workforce continued commuting rather than living in the dormitory, placing the burden of long hours and travel on female employees who had originally been recruited as part of Japan’s ambitious modernization program. The episode exposes the contradiction at the heart of Meiji industrialization: Tomioka was celebrated as a model factory with education and modern machinery, but its later private management increasingly treated women’s labor as an input to be intensified. Mitsui eventually sold the mill and its associated silk factories to entrepreneur Hara Tomitaro in 1902 for 135,000 yen.