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Building Capitalism• Emergence of industrial economy• Lead by textiles and mining
• Intimately tied to rural economy
Interpretative Issues: Three Angles 1. Proto-industrialization: specialized local production
for distant markets, regional and national2. Human capital: “liberated” (dispossessed?) samurai; educated and entrepreneurial farmers, merchants
Iwakura: “I have often heard people say that Boston is the brain of the American Union.”
Europe
N. America
Route of Iwakuramission
Explanations: The Developmental State
-schools -postal service (and savings)
Mobilizing capital: Building infrastructure
3. The Developmental StateBuilding infrastructure: model factories
-Shipyards, coal and copper mines, engineering works and arsenals
-textiles: cotton and silk spinning
-Foundation of the zaibatsu
State roleIn sum: the government : -mobilized capital -imported knowledge, technology
-built infrastructure and factories
-mobilized human resources :foreign trainers, domestic
trainees.
Fourth factor: Luck?
A “breathing space” in the international system?
•West impinges late on Japan: learn from experience
“prostrate sprawling body of China which actedas a shield...against the greed of the Europeans”
Weighing the Explanations -proto-industrial foundation-human capital potential, unleashed -developmental state as guiding hand -“breathing space”—luck
•The state as relatively decisive?
•In a sense, it is the state which creates the “breathing space,” as much as the other way around.
•Whatever the weight of explanation, the legacy in economic thinking and policy has been profound and long-lived, both in Japan and globally
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