ABSTRACT
The impressive, indeed meteoric, rise of the Japanese economy, since the Second World War, which has raised it to the position of the world's third largest industrial producer, has been one of the most significant and unexpected changes of recent history. The elite of the new regime which took power with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, while not wishing to break with the traditional way of life, deliberately set out to endow their still feudal agrarian country with the institutions and economic organization of a modern state. The First World War acted as a forcing house for the industrialization of Japan. Industrialization was accelerated by war and, despite the setbacks, continued steadily through the inter-war years. Economic crisis and war mobilization thus created abnormal conditions during the 1930s to which the government and big business responded by further measures of protectionism and concentration.
