The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change, 1868-1938

The rise of Japan from agrarianism to a position as one of the leading industrial powers is one of the most dramatic and meaningful phenomena in economic history. Professor Lockwood, assistant director of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University, lucidly describes this astonishing transformation, analyzes the factors involved (capital, technology, foreign trade, the role of the state, etc.), and discusses the consequences.

This volume has two main purposes. One to show the importance to Japan of the international order which militarists had done so much to destroy, and which would have to be recreated in its essentials if it were again to prosper. The other was to challenge a notion prevalent in books about Japan– the nation that its economic development since the Meiji Restoration has been confined mainly within the sphere of foreign trade and factory industry, that its benefits has been largely drained away in imperialist wars and zaibatsu profits, and that otherwise had little substance. This study hopes to help illuminate the wider perspectives of Japan’s remarkable industrialization over half a century. The first two chapters chronicle the history of the period. Chapter three attempts to establish the overall dimensions of growth in the economy. The reminder of the volume takes up the chief elements in the development process, and the conditions shaping the direction and rate of change.