Suchergebnisse

This study suggests that the militaristic orientation of the Meiji government and the wars fought against China and Russia contributed significantly to technological development in Meiji Japan (1868–1911). The roles played by the arsenals and the government-owned shipyards and factories in adopting and disseminating foreign technology are described to demonstrate their importance in the rapid Meiji industrialization. The article suggests that it is necessary to reexamine the view, primarily based on macro-economic analysis, that Meiji militarism was basically detrimental to economic growth in Japan.

Increasing our knowledge of Tokugawa economic history is important for a better understanding of the causes of the rapid Japanese industrialization which followed, but as yet no attempt has been made to provide a theoretical framework with which to analyze the Tokugawa economy. The cost of neglecting to work out a new economic history of Tokugawa Japan is high. Many Western historians, economic as well as others, continue to make use of findings and interpretations provided by Japanese economic historians, most of whom are Marxist in their ideological and methodological orientations. Presented with the force of ideological conviction and repeated in book after book, the Marxist view of Tokugawa economic history is so deeply rooted in Japanese literature that it can claim many followers who make use of its interpretations and views without suspecting the ideological and methodological framework upon which they rest. Another increasingly serious cost is that many of the research findings contributed recently by a few Western scholars and a small group of Japanese economic historians continue to remain disjointed findings in search of an analytical framework which can accommodate them into a meaningful whole.