The writer intended to study the changes of regional structures in Yao after the industrial revolution of Japan in terms of the side jobs (subsidiary industries) of the inhabitants. After the industrial revolution, which began in 1890's, the great cities as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya have expanded so much that the surrounding areas of the cities have been changed in an amazing speed by way of the urbanization. Yao was also one of them.
Yao stuaties in the southeastern suburb of Osaka built-up areas, about ten kilometers from the city center. Its area (Yao, Higashi Osaka City) is about 100km²., and there extend marshy lowlands between Osaka and Ikoma Mts., in either side of Previous Yamato River. In the period from the late Feudal Days to 1880's, cotton cultivation and cotton industries in small scale had flourished there, but the introduction of the modern industries in Osaka has changed remarkably the areal structures of the surrounding areas, especially that of Yao. The traditional side jobs in Yao inevitably altered their contents. Semboku, which lies in the southern suburbs at the similar distance from Osaka, has experienced the different changes from Yao. And why?
The results of this study are as follows:
1) The cotton cultivation and cotton industries in Yao have entirely vanished in 1880's and in Wakae, Shibukawa and Shiki, which are in the northwestern and Southern part of Yao, new side jobs as making buttons, planting animal hair to tooth brushes, putting a label on match boxes, which were all related to the modern industries in Osaka, were introduced. But such changes have not occurred in Semboku.
2) This owed to the early decline of cotton cultivation in Yao and there were much of cheaper labor force as the results of the decline. On the contrary, in Semboku, there has remained many side jobs as sugar refining, bleaching of cotton cloth, seed oil refining which had begun already in the late Feudal Days.
3) It is very interesting to see that the side jobs such as the production of glass lenses and watch glasses, which was directly introduced from Osaka, were in the western part of Yao and the production of hammocks and knitting had a relation with the old traditional industry of cotton cultivation of Yao itself.
4) Taking advantage of these new side jobs, Yao have afterwards developed into the suburban industrial region of Osaka.