The nineteenth-century transformation of the Japanese economy

Japan’s economy at the dawn of modernization How did Japan industrialize and become one of the world’s leading economies? Two hundred years ago, Japan was a pre-industrial, agricultural country with technology and living standards similar to those of other peasant economies in Asia or Europe. As one economic historian noted, a Frenchman of 1600 would have readily understood most features of Japanese economic life of 1800 (Crawcour 1989: 569). Within the next 100 years, however, Japan joined the modern world of steel, railroads, telegraph, steamships, banking and armies backed by industrial power.