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CHAPTER XVI - Aspects of economic and social policy in Japan, 1868–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Seymour A. Broadbridge
Edited by
Peter Mathias  and
Sidney Pollard
Seymour A. Broadbridge
Affiliation:
University of London
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Summary

Introduction

Japan entered a new era in its economic history in 1868, when the Tokugawa regime ended and the Emperor Meiji was installed as the head of state. This is not to say that the Tokugawa period (1603–1868) was one lacking in economic and social change. There had been substantial population growth in the seventeenth century, considerable urban development, growth in agricultural productivity, industrial growth on a domestic system basis, and, most spectacular of all, the rise of the merchant class, whose economic power had increased greatly relative to that of the samurai and the peasants. At the end of the Tokugawa period, from the 1840s, there had also been efforts to introduce modern naval armaments industries, and also, after Perry forced Japan open to international intercourse in 1853–4, negotiations to conclude commercial treaties with the great powers, treaties which from 1858, brought Japan into the network of foreign trade. But Japan remained in 1868 an economically and politically backward nation compared with the industrial nations of Europe.

What was needed was a new government determined to introduce modern economic and political structures; this government was provided by the lower and middle samurai of, principally, the Choshu and Satsuma han, or domains, which had led the fight to overthrow the Tokugawa regime. These domains had already made substantial progress in reforming their own financial and economic organization and in introducing new strategic industries for their military and naval forces.

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The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire , pp. 1106 - 1145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

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