ABSTRACT
An economy on the march The years following the Meiji Restoration were ones of institution building, often in a trial and error process. However, an enduring influence on economic policy for many decades was the fear of colonial domination by the western powers. The vivid examples of the treaty port system imposed by the industrial military powers of Great Britain, the United States, France and Germany on Vietnam, Korea, Siam and China, as well as the six ports opened in Japan itself, were constant reminders of the need to industrialize quickly. The positive effects of state building and industrialization were readily absorbed by Japanese planners: at the time of the Chinese revolution that overthrew the Ching dynasty in 1911, 50 Chinese cities were subject to extraterritoriality; Japan, however, abolished these foreign rights in 1899. Japan was able to negotiate the end of foreign intrusion largely because it had built the institutions of laws, courts and enforcement that satisfied western qualms on the quality of domestic justice (Kayaoglu 2006: 20).
