Abstract
Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912) has often been held up as a paradigmatic case of capitalist development “from above,” in which industrial capitalism did not emerge from a revolution in the production relations of the rural majority. Instead, state elites used fiscal policy to nurture the development of capitalism on top of a fundamentally pre-capitalist agrarian economy. This chapter criticizes these accounts and provides an alternative explanation of the transition to capitalism in Japan. This involves two main tasks. First, this chapter collects the ample evidence of broadly based productive dynamism and capital accumulation within the rural sector. Japanese capitalism was born not as isolated enclaves but instead in the countryside itself. Second, this chapter argues, against many of the economic historians who have contributed to uncovering the dynamism of the Meiji-era rural economy, that this process of economic development was not simply a continuation of the commercialization of the preceding centuries. Instead, changes to the legal enforcement of landlords’ property rights enacted by the Meiji state in the 1870s, tied to its efforts to reform the land tax, fatally undermined the non-market access to the means of subsistence previously enjoyed by peasant cultivators.
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Notes
- 1.
Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1982).
- 2.
Robert Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots of Modern Capitalism,” in The Brenner Debate, ed. T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
- 3.
For a summary in English of these debates, see Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
- 4.
Kōhachirō Takahashi, “Nihon No Tochiseido-Shi Ni Okeru Meiji Ishin No Ichi,” in Sekai No Naka No Meiji Ishin, ed. Akira Tanaka (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 2001); Shigeki Tōyama, “Meiji Ishin,” in Tōyama Shigeki Chosakushū Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991). Note that to ensure consistency, in citations Japanese names will be given in the Western order.
- 5.
Masanori Nakamura, “Nihon Jinushiseishi Kenkyū Josetsu: Senzen Nihon Shihonshugi To Kisei Jinushisei To No Kenren Wo Megutte,” Hitotsubashi Daigaku Kenkyū Nenpō, Keizaigaku Kenkyū 12 (1968).
- 6.
English-language representatives of this line of argument include Jamie C. Allinson and Alexander Anievas, “The Uneven and Combined Development of the Meiji Restoration: A Passive Revolutionary Road to Capitalist Modernity,” Capital & Class 34, no. 3 (2010); Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975); Barrington Jr. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); E. H. Norman, “Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State,” in Origins of the Modern Japanese State, ed. John W. Dower (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975); Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978).
- 7.
In the words of one scholar, who in other ways pushes back against the “seminar faction” interpretation, the agricultural sector did eventually come to be “subsumed” in the capitalist economy, but “the process of subordinating agriculture to capital did not take the form of capital directly grasping agricultural production but instead … an indirect form … ‘an external solution.’” Sumiaki Iwamoto, “Kindai-Teki Tochi Shoyū To Kiseijinushi-Teki Tochi Shoyū: Kindai No Giron O Megutte,” Nōgyō Keizai Kenkyū 50, no. 3: 139.
- 8.
Robert Brenner, “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review I, no. 104 (1977).
- 9.
Penelope Francks, Rural Economic Development in Japan (London: Routledge, 2006); Yujiro Hayami and Saburo Yamada, eds., The Agricultural Development of Japan: A Century’s Perspective (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991).
- 10.
Massoud Karshenas, Industrialization and Agricultural Surplus: A Comparative Study of Economic Development in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
- 11.
Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Yamamura, Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
- 12.
Kozo Yamamura, “Pre-Industrial Landholding Patterns in Japan and England,” in Japan: A Comparative View, ed. A. M. Craig (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 320.
- 13.
Yujiro Hayami and Vernon W. Ruttan, “Toward a Theory of Induced Institutional Innovation,” in Can Economic Growth Be Sustained? The Collective Papers of Vernon W. Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami, ed. Keijiro Otsuka and C. Ford Runge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 227.
- 14.
Francks, Rural Economic Development in Japan.
- 15.
Osamu Saitō and Masayuki Tanimoto, “The Transformation of Traditional Industries,” in The Economic History of Japan: 1600–1990, Volume 1: Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600–1859, ed. Akira Hayami, Osamu Saitō, and Ronald P. Toby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
- 16.
Osamu Saito and Masanori Takashima, “Population, Urbanisation and Farm Output in Early Modern Japan, 1600––1874: A Review of Data and Benchmark Estimates,” RCESR Discussion Paper Series no. DP15-3 (Tokyo: The Research Center for Economic and Social Risks, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2015): 10.
- 17.
Osamu Saito, “Japan,” in A History of the Global Economy: From 1500 to the Present, ed. Joerg Baten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 173.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Hayami and Yamada, The Agricultural Development of Japan, Table A-1.
- 20.
Mark Cohen, “The Political Process of the Revolutionary Samurai: A Comparative Reconsideration of Japan’s Meiji Restoration,” Theory and Society 43, no. 2 (2014).
- 21.
Mark Cohen, “Historical Sociology’s Puzzle of the Missing Transitions: A Case Study of Early Modern Japan,” American Sociological Review 80, no. 3 (2015).
- 22.
Munekazu Kurauchi, “Senzenki Kosakuryō No Dōkō To Keizaiteki Seikaku,” Ningen To Shakai 7 (1996).
- 23.
Yutaka Arimoto, “Kaihatsu Keizaigaku Kara Mita Jichi Sonraku Ron,” Rekishigaku Kenkyū 40 (2006); Kunio Niwa, Tochi Mondai No Kigen: Mura To Shizen To Meiji Ishin (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1989).
- 24.
Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).
- 25.
John Whitney Hall, “Foundations of the Modern Japanese Daimyo,” in Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, ed. John Whitney Hall and Marius B. Jansen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Naohiro Asao, “The Sixteenth-Century Unification,” in Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4: Early Modern Japan, ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Osamu Wakita, “The Emergence of the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan: From Oda to Tokugawa,” Journal of Japanese Studies 8, no. 2 (1982).
- 26.
Edward E. Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gōnō (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Yutaka Arimoto, “Kosakuryō Genmen Kankō To Torihiki Hiyō,” Nōgyōshi Kenkyū 39 (2005).
- 27.
Masaki Nakabayashi, “Torihiki No Tōchi To Shoshijō No Chikujitekina Kakudai,” in Nihon Keizai No Nagai Kindaika: Tōchi To Shijō, Soshite Soshiki, 1600–1970, ed. Masaki Nakabayashi (Nagoya, Japan: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), 23–24.
- 28.
For instance, as seen in what is now Niigata prefecture, Kiyoshi Nakayama, Kyodai Jinushi Keiei No Shiteki Kōzō (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2001), 51–56.
- 29.
Sources: Hyogo: Hiroki Ikeda, Kinsei Nihon No Ōjinushi Keisei Kenkyū (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 2008), 22; Yamagata: Hideki Abe, Kinsei Shonai Jinushi No Seisei (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha, 1994), 165; Okayma: Nakayama, Kyodai Jinushi Keiei No Shiteki Kōzō, 84–85 (Niigata); Ōta, Nihon Jinushisei Seiritsu Katei No Kenkyū, 362.
- 30.
W. G. Beasley, “Meiji Political Institutions,” in The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 639.
- 31.
On the process of assessing land values, see Haruki Okuda, Meiji Kokka To Kindaiteki Tochi Shoyū (Tokyo: Dōseisha, 2007). The back of the document included the following statement: “The Japanese citizen who holds this deed has the right to freely employ or hold this land, as well as the right to sell, transfer, mortgage, or pawn it.” Quoted in Takeo Ono, Meiji Zenki Tochi Seido Shiron (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1948), 220.
- 32.
Ken’ichi Ōta, Nihon Jinushisei Seiritsu Katei No Kenkyū: Kinki-Gata Jinushi Keiei No Bunseki (Okayama-shi: Fukutake Shoten, 1981), 306. This was not an unfounded fear, based on the example of anti-tax protests in the late Tokugawa era; see Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 140–141.
- 33.
Quoted in Nakayama, Kyodai Jinushi Keiei No Shiteki Kōzō, 379.
- 34.
Ono, Meiji Zenki Tochi Seido Shiron.
- 35.
Niwa, Tochi Mondai No Kigen, 221.
- 36.
Quoted in Munekazu Kurauchi, “Chiso Kaisei To Jinushisei,” Ningen To Shakai 1 (1990): 24.
- 37.
Ono, Meiji Zenki Tochi Seido Shiron, 206.
- 38.
Ibid., 295.
- 39.
Roger W. Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
- 40.
Nōchi Seido Shiryō Shūsei Hensan Iinkai, Nōchi Seido Shiryō Shūsei Vol. 1: Kosaku Kankō Ni Kansuru Shiryō (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo, 1970), 21–23.
- 41.
Kurauchi, “Senzenki Kosakuryō No Dōkō To Keizaiteki Seikaku.”
- 42.
Sources: Okayama 1879–1887: Ōta, Nihon Jinushisei Seiritsu Katei No Kenkyū, 362; Okayama 1884–1914: Kaichirō Ōishi, ed. Kindai Nihon Ni Okeru Jinushi Keiei No Tenkai: Okayama-Ken Ushimado-Chō Nishihattori-Ke No Kenkyū (Tōkyō: Ochanomizu Shobō, 1985), 221–228; Okayama 1907–1920: Masao Arimoto, “Kyodai Jinushi No Shokakki To ‘Saiseisan Kidō’: Okayama Ken Kojima-Gun Nozaki-Ke No Bunseki,” Tochi Seido Shigaku 12, no. 4 (1970): 40–41; Shiga: Takemaro Mori, “Kinki Chihō Ni Okeru Jinushi Keiei No Tenkai,” Shisō 20 (1979): 82; Shizuoka: Masao Tsutsui, “Nihon Teikoku Shugi Seiritsu-Ki Ni Okeru Nōson Shihai Taisei: Shizuoka-Ken Harasato-Mura No Jirei O Chūshin Ni,” Tochi Seido Shigaku 27, no. 1 (1984): 20.
- 43.
Hayami and Yamada, The Agricultural Development of Japan, 253.
- 44.
Toshio Furushima, Shihonsei Seisan No Hatten To Jinushisei (Tōkyō: Ochanomizu Shobō, 1963), 500.
- 45.
Nōshōmu Daijin Kanbō Tōkeika, Nōshōmu Tōkeihyō, No. 25 (Tokyo: Nōshōmushō, 1914), 1–5.
- 46.
Mataji Umemura, Long-Term Economic Statistics of Japan, Vol. 2: Labor (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha, 1988), 216–225.
- 47.
Shunsaku Shōji, Kingendai Nihon No Nōson: Nōsei No Genten Wo Saguru (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003), 38–39.
- 48.
Masami Ōba, “‘Meiji Nōhō’ No Dōnyū Katei,” in Zenji Nisshi: Kaidai, ed. Toyohara Kenkyūkai (Tokyo: Nōgyō Sōgō Kenkyūjo, 1976); Penelope Francks, Technology and Agricultural Development in Pre-War Japan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 160–170.
- 49.
Robert Brenner and Christopher Isett, “England’s Divergence from China’s Yangtze Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics, and Patterns of Development,” Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 2 (2002).
- 50.
Consider the following estimates, from Hayami and Yamada, The Agricultural Development of Japan. Between 1880 and 1910, the value of livestock as an input in agriculture increased 46%, of feed by 76%, and of fertilizer by 97%, while investment in machinery and implements lagged, growing only 27% in the same period (Table A-8). In terms of productivity, the increase was 45% per area of arable land, 78% per worker, and 28% per estimated work hour (Tables A-1, A-5, and A-6).
- 51.
This is illustrated dramatically by the typical household budgets revealed by survey reports in the early twentieth century; see Mankichi Saitō, Jitchi Keizai Nōgyō Shishin: Nihon Nōgyō No Keizaiteki Hensen (Tōkyō: Nō-san-gyoson Bunka Kyōkai, 1975).
- 52.
Ann Waswo, Japanese Landlords: The Decline of a Rural Elite (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 38–42.
- 53.
Kozo Yamamura, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship: Quantitative Analyses of Economic and Social Aspects of the Samurai in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Naofumi Nakamura, Chihō Kara No Sangyō Kakumei (Nagoya, Japan: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2010); Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite.
- 54.
Furushima, Shihonsei Seisan No Hatten To Jinushisei, 196–198; Nakayama, Kyodai Jinushi Keiei No Shiteki Kōzō, 418–449; Ōta, Nihon Jinushisei Seiritsu Katei No Kenkyū, 352–324.
- 55.
Yukiteru Ōguri, “Nihon Jinushi-Sei No Tenkai Ni Kansuru Jakkan No Ronten,” Nōgyōshi Kenkyū 31–32 (1998).
- 56.
Nakamura, “Nihon Jinushiseishi Kenkyū Josetsu,” 238.
- 57.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, “The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism,” New Left Review I, no. 127 (1981).
- 58.
Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan.
- 59.
As Vivek Chibber argues in his confrontation with not-unrelated currents in Indian historiography; see Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013).
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Cohen, M. (2019). The Peasantry and Tenancy-Market Dependence: Rural Capitalism in Meiji-Era Japan. In: Lafrance, X., Post, C. (eds) Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95657-2_9
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