‘Latecomer’ Industrial Revolution in Japan in involved certain factors that were markedly different from…

Question

‘Latecomer’ Industrial Revolution in Japan in involved certain factors that were markedly different from what West had experienced. Analyze.

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Japan's latecomer industrialisation differed from the West's because the state, not private entrepreneurs, led it for national survival, with peasant taxes, borrowed technology and zaibatsu capital. The Land Tax Reform of 1873 and state factories such as the Tomioka Silk Mill (1872) show this state-driven path.

**Introduction**

Gerschenkron argued that a late industrialiser must substitute the state for the pioneer's slow, organic growth. Meiji Japan, opened by Perry in 1853, did exactly this after 1868, compressing a British century into about four decades.

**How the Meiji State Organised Industrialisation**

SKETCH: comparison | Britain vs Meiji Japan
a: Britain (pioneer)
b: Meiji Japan (latecomer)
- Profit motive :: National survival
- Private entrepreneurs :: State as pioneer
- Home-grown inventions :: Imported techniques
- Tariffs set at will :: Tariffs capped by treaty
- About a century :: About four decades

1. **State as entrepreneur**: The government built the Tomioka Silk Mill and the Tokyo-Yokohama railway in 1872, then sold most enterprises to private buyers in the 1880s.
2. **Capital from the peasantry**: Lacking colonies, Japan funded industry through the Land Tax Reform of 1873, and the 1895 Chinese indemnity later helped build the Yawata Steel Works (1901).
3. **Borrowed technology**: The Iwakura Mission (1871-73) and hired foreign experts, the oyatoi gaikokujin, brought in techniques Britain had invented slowly; state-favoured zaibatsu such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi then concentrated capital.

**A Different Purpose and Social Setting**

1. **Defensive nationalism**: Fukoku kyohei, "rich country, strong army", made industry a shield against the West, so shipyards and arsenals grew beside textile mills.
2. **No tariff shield**: The unequal treaties of 1858 capped import duties until 1911, denying the protection Germany and the USA enjoyed.
3. **Feudal elite as modernisers**: Abolishing the domains in 1871 turned samurai into officials and entrepreneurs, a revolution from above, though mills still ran on poorly paid young women as in Lancashire.

**Conclusion**

Japan's revolution was state-led, nationalist and borrowed, yet shared the West's textile base and cheap labour. Victory over Russia in 1905 announced the first non-Western industrial power, though its militarised path also fed expansionism.

‘Latecomer’ Industrial Revolution in Japan in involved certain factors that were markedly different from what West had experienced. Analyze.

Model answer

Practise this question

Industrial Revolution3 questions

Ghissu