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(★)(Whoever makes the comparison cannot fail to note the sharply different responses of China and Japan to the intrusion of the West. To state the difference oversimply : traditional Chinese society after a prolonged agony of resistance to alien influences collapsed, opening the way to drastic change, while Japanese society adapted, changing more rapidly but in important respects less radically as a result.／ The disruptive wedge of Western influence in Asia was trade, to which both China and Japan were opened wide by commercial treaties thrust on them by superior force in the middle of the nineteenth century. In both cases the initial economic consequences were approximately the same : a flood of machine-made goods progressively destroyed indigenous handicraft industry whose products were simpler, cruder, and for the most part dearer. This has been noted by many writers, but it has not been sufficiently stressed. What was destroyed was not merely the living of a small artisan class, but the margin that permitted the peasant to farm successfully. For, both in China and Japan, except for crafts that by their refinement were arts, handicraft industry was an adjunct to agriculture and was carried on in peasant homes.／ In China this destructive process continued with nothing emerging to replace what the peasant economy lost. As a consequence, not only was the equilibrium of agriculture upset and the peasantry driven to rebellion and finally to revolution ; the vitality of Chinese institutions was smothered at the source. When, in the twentieth century, China´s leaders first awoke fully to China´s plight, decline had gone too far for recovery built on the inheritance of the past. Grandiose plans for restoring life to expiring institutions were endlessly spun, but so enfeebled was the state, so parlous the treasury, and so shaken the leaders that men with the best of intentions were powerless to carry plans beyond the precincts of government bureaus. So the loss of strength continued in the old way despite the wish to reform, until frustration and despair created new forces of awful violence and power that would reconstruct Chinese society along revolutionary lines.／ Japan started down the same steep road to national disaster, but saved herself midway by something like a forced march to industrialization that began with a political revolution. The speed of the march was important, since a new economic base for political power had to be created before the traditional one, already violently shaken, gave way --unless there was to be a long intermediate period of foreign encroachment and national impotence during which almost everything traditionally Japanese would become a symbol of failure. Instead, within a generation of the revolution of 1868, the transition from an almost purely agrarian to a predominantly industrial economy had been made ; and by the strength this transition developed, Japan was not only made safe from the encroachment of expansive Western powers, she was enabled to join them and pick up imperialist prizes that brought additional strength. Equally important, since old values sanctioned the innovations and the wrenching and painful adjustments these entailed, Japan´s past was looked upon as the ultimate source of her strength and so became part of her future.／ Although from time to time for contrast we will touch upon events in China, this book is concerned with Japan, during what might be called the critical phase of the forced march --from 1868 to 1880, when government enterprise was dominant. This was the most critical period of Japanese industrialization for two reasons : first, because industrialization, so far as history yet records, is more difficult to initiate than sustain ; and, second, because initial failure or even delay would have been fatal, as it proved in China. These early years, then, should throw more light than later periods on how the Japanese feat of industrialization, unique in Asia to the middle of the twentieth century, was accomplished. This is the general question that concerns us, but it must be broken into more specific and manageable parts. One cannot treat everything relevant to so radical a development as industrialization because in one way or another almost everything is relevant, and twelve years are a long time when things are happening fast. Our particular questions, which we will ask as we go along, are by no means the only relevant ones and we cannot claim that together they elicit a complete answer to thegeneral question with which we start. It will be enough if they are significant questions and the answers to them cast light in occasional dark corners. There is another limitation to be mentioned here : no attempt has been made to deal with the industrial development of Hokkaidoo, since the basic collection of materials on the economic history of our period does not cover that island.／ [from ´PREFACE to the First Printing´, June 1954, T.C.S.] ▼CONTENTS／ ●I.The Beginnings of Modern Industry／ ●II.Political Change and Technological Innovation／ ●III.Motivation／ ●IV.Private Versus Government Enterprise／ ●V.Government Enterprises／ ●VI.Modernization in the Textile Industry／ ●VII.The Financing of Government Enterprise／ ●VIII.The Sale of Government Enterprises／) |
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