Kawabe

Kawabe was a district of Settsu, extending from the Osaka plain towards the wooded hills of the Inagawa country. In its northern part, the Tada silver and copper mines linked village labour with the ambitions of military rulers. During the later sixteenth century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi took control of the area and encouraged mining; records of deliveries to his Fushimi storehouse in 1598 included silver from Tada.

A rich vein discovered in 1661 brought the mining settlement under direct Tokugawa control. More than seventy neighbouring villages were attached to the mine's administration, and an official's residence and four checkpoints followed in 1662. Ore extraction, sorting and smelting sustained a busy mining community close to the commercial cities of Osaka and Kyoto. The mines adopted advanced refining methods, and their technology also reached Ikuno. Kawabe's countryside was consequently more than an agricultural supplier to the plain: its hills formed an industrial district where officials, miners and dependent villages worked within a tightly supervised system of metal production.