When governments and their policies are used to explain the incentives which influence individual choice, a political economy approach is being used to synthesise some of the insights of both economists and sociologists. In connection with excess female mortality, the political economy approach asks us to consider how government policies might have influenced the construction of gender during the process of development, in a way that made it temporarily hazardous to be a young female during a period of accelerated social and economic change. This chapter explores how the government's new policies could have so compromised the relative welfare of young girls and young women that it shortened the lives of a substantial number, during infancy, childhood, adolescence as well as the reproductively active years. It analyzes how Meiji Japan's policies with respect to women were selected in order to help Japan become a rich country with a strong army in as short a time as possible.