ABSTRACT
The three salient features of Meiji industrialization are very strong private sector initiative supported by appropriate official assistance, successful import substitution in the cotton industry, and parallel development of the modern sector and the indigenous sector. The Japanese economy underwent several stages after the opening of ports in the late Edo period. Choice between fiscal activism and a small government was the main arguing point of Japan's first parliament convened in 1890, and the fight between two camps continued into the twentieth century. Regarding trade structure, raw silk-silk yarn rather than finished silk products-dominated Japan's exports, followed by tea, cereals, seafood, minerals and coal. As the export of cotton yarn and the import of raw cotton both rose, the government abolished the cotton yarn export tax in 1894 and the cotton import tariff in 1896. Western technology was imported and internalized in phased but overlapping steps.
