Industrial Revolution · CHAPTER 10 ·
Industrialisation of Meiji Japan
Chapter 10 of The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914: “Japan: Industrialisation from Above”
After American warships under Commodore Perry forced Japan open in 1853–54, the Meiji government that took power in 1868 set out to make the country rich and strong. The state built railways and model factories such as the Tomioka silk mill (1872), and private firms such as the Osaka Spinning Company (1883) led the next phase.
Chapter 10 is included with every paid plan. WW2 is free in full, and chapter 1 of every atlas is free. A free account opens 3 more chapters a day. Starter, at $9 a month, opens all 21 with no daily limit — see the plans.
Free printable Industrial Revolution study guide, sent by email ↓
The map above is the world of The industrial world, 1910 — Japan’s industrial empire.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1910 · Europe in 1910.
Part of IB History: The Industrial Revolution →
SHORT EXPLANATION
Japan's leaders saw industry as a means of defending their country's independence. In 1853–54 Commodore Matthew Perry's American warships forced Japan to open its ports. The unequal treaties of 1858, imposed under threat like a contract one party is forced to sign, restricted import taxes and gave foreigners their own courts on Japanese soil. Foreign trade began at Yokohama in 1859. British warships had already humbled China; Japan's leaders feared a similar loss of control.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 overthrew the shogun, the hereditary military ruler who governed in the emperor's name. Young samurai, members of the old warrior class comparable to Europe's knights, seized power in the name of the young emperor Meiji. Their government sought a rich country and a strong army. It hired foreign experts, built railways and telegraphs, and established model factories such as the Tomioka silk mill in 1872 for others to copy.
Private firms carried the expansion onward, drawing on cheap labor, much of it young women from farming families. The steam-powered Osaka Spinning Company showed in 1883 that a large cotton mill could make a profit. By 1897 Japan exported more cotton yarn than it imported, much spun from Indian cotton shipped from Bombay. Women in Nagano and Gunma reeled silk—unwinding thread from cocoons—and silk became Japan's largest export, paying for imported machines. The state opened the heavy-industry steelworks at Yawata in 1901.
Japan was the first country outside Europe and its settler colonies to industrialize. On the map it changes from the blue of an opened economy to the grey-tan of an industrializing one. Korea and Taiwan turn tan as Japanese colonies, whose land and labor helped sustain that rise. The poisoned river below the Ashio copper mine shows another cost at home.
The full story
In 1839–42 Britain fought China in the Opium War after China tried to stop British merchants selling Indian opium. Britain's steam-powered navy humbled Asia's greatest empire. Japan's rulers had reason to notice: when Commodore Perry arrived in 1853 with American steam warships, Japan had no effective answer.
The commercial treaties of 1858 were imposed under threat. They opened ports including Yokohama, gave foreigners their own courts, and kept import tariffs low—about five percent from 1866. Japan recovered full control over those taxes only in 1911. For the leaders who seized power in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the problem was how to acquire the strength to resist such pressure. Their slogan, fukoku kyōhei, “rich country, strong army”, joined industrial development to national survival.
The new government was led by former samurai of the warrior class. It abolished the domains of some 270 feudal lords: these were semi-independent territories, rather like provinces with their own princes. A cash land tax helped pay for modernization, and compulsory service supplied a national army.
The government also tried to show private producers how modern industry could work. It opened the Tomioka silk mill in 1872 with French machines and the French engineer Paul Brunat. Young women learned to reel thread from cocoons and were recruited to teach the technique elsewhere. That year a railway connected Tokyo and Yokohama; a line reached Kobe in 1889.
State ownership had its limits. In the 1880s, facing deep government debt, finance minister Matsukata Masayoshi cut spending and sold most state factories to private firms, among them Mitsui and Mitsubishi. These grew into zaibatsu, family-controlled groups spanning banking, mining, shipping and trade, comparable to South Korea's Samsung today. Banker Shibusawa Eiichi's steam-powered Osaka Spinning Company, opened in 1883, became a model for private mills. Red patches around Osaka, Nagano and Gunma show the textile industry spreading. The government had accepted early risks; investors could now follow an example that promised profit.
The workers who made textiles paid a price for that expansion. Women accounted for about 80 percent of textile workers, many recruited on contracts from poor farm families. They lived in dormitories and worked twelve hours or more a day. Government doctor Ishihara Osamu reported in 1913 that many went home with tuberculosis.
Heavy industry drew on different resources and on imperial victories. The state opened the Yawata steelworks beside the Chikuhō coalfield in 1901, using part of the indemnity, or compensation forced on a defeated country, paid by China after the war of 1894–95. That war also gave Japan Taiwan. Victory over Russia in 1905 brought a lease in southern Manchuria and control of Korea, which Japan annexed in 1910. Railways from Seoul and a colonial land survey tied Korean farms to Japan's economy. At home, waste from the Ashio copper mine poisoned farms along the Watarase river, and politician Tanaka Shōzō led protests. Industrial success had costs borne by workers, colonial subjects and farming communities.
FULL EXPLANATION
How much did the state do?
The Meiji state took power in the young Emperor Meiji's name in 1868 and undertook projects private investors were unwilling to finance. Thomas C. Smith's 1955 study of government enterprise described shipyards, mines, weapons factories and model mills built by officials. This fits economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron's theory that late-developing countries use banks and the state to perform functions that markets performed in Britain. State enterprise, however, was only one part of the story. Many government ventures lost money and were sold cheaply to well-connected private buyers in the 1880s. Cotton spinning and silk reeling—the unwinding of thread from cocoons—earned much of the foreign currency needed for imports. Private investment, including investment in small rural workshops, drove their growth. Penelope Francks and others direct attention further back, to the Tokugawa shogunate, the military government of 1603–1868. It left national markets and merchant houses such as Mitsui, founded in 1673. Sociologist Ronald Dore estimated that by the 1860s perhaps 40 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls had received some schooling outside the home. The Meiji state removed obstacles, built infrastructure and took early risks, but its efforts drew strength from a commercial, partly educated society willing to send daughters to the mills.
The factory girls of Meiji Japan
Much of Japan's textile output came from teenage girls. Historians including E. Patricia Tsurumi, in Factory Girls (1990), and Janet Hunter have reconstructed their lives. Recruiting agents paid poor farm families an advance against a daughter's future wages. Until that debt was worked off, the girl was bound to the mill. She could live in a locked dormitory and work twelve hours or more per shift; many became ill. Official records described some of the consequences. The government survey Shokkō jijō (Conditions of Factory Workers, 1903) documented abuses. In 1913 government doctor Ishihara Osamu linked the mills to tuberculosis spreading in the countryside. Company records and official reports help explain how cheap yarn was produced; surviving workers' songs offer a view of mill life from the workers themselves. Even where debt made departure difficult, workers resisted. In 1886 silk reelers at the Amamiya mill in Kōfu struck against longer hours and lower pay, in what is often called Japan's first strike. Japan passed its first Factory Act in 1911 and enforced it from 1916, limiting the hours of women and children. The debt binding girls to mills had been one reason Japanese yarn was cheap.
Industrialisation and empire
War with China brought Japan money as well as territory. After its defeat in 1894–95, China paid an indemnity of about 230 million taels, a Chinese unit of silver. The payment financed the Yawata steelworks and helped Japan adopt the gold standard in 1897. Linking the currency to gold, as Britain had done, made foreign borrowing easier. Taiwan, ceded in 1895, supplied sugar, rice and camphor, distilled from trees for medicines and early plastics. Japan had itself opened Korea in 1876 with an unequal treaty, forced on a weaker party and modeled on those Western powers had imposed on Japan. Korea became a Japanese protectorate, with its government controlled by Japan, in 1905; annexation followed in 1910. Colonial authorities built railways and ports, while the 1910–18 land survey registered property in ways that dispossessed many Korean farmers. Rice exports to Japan rose most steeply after 1920. Historians in Japan, Korea and the West disagree about how to weigh this history. Some emphasize colonial modernization and the infrastructure and industrial experience left behind. Others stress the Japanese purposes those projects served, the coercion involved and Korean resistance. An industrial power had seized colonies for resources and markets, repeating in Asia a pattern European powers had pursued for a century.
Key places on the map
Why it happened
The shock of Western power. China tried to stop British opium sales, but Britain's steam-powered navy defeated it in the Opium War of 1839–42. Commodore Perry's American steam warships arrived off Japan in 1853 and showed that Japan, too, could not keep foreigners out. Treaties signed under threat limited its import tariffs and its courts' reach. Many samurai, members of the hereditary warrior class, concluded that Japan needed industry to finance an army and navy capable of avoiding China's fate. Fear of Western power gave modernization urgency.
A state that chose industry. The Meiji government that took power in 1868 dismantled the domains of the daimyo, the feudal lords who had ruled Japan's regions. It raised a national army by conscription, or compulsory service, and collected a cash land tax. The revenue supported railways, telegraphs, shipyards and model factories that private firms could copy. Officials also looked abroad for knowledge. The Iwakura Mission of 1871–73 sent senior ministers to study the United States and Europe, and the government hired about three thousand foreign experts. Where private capital was missing, the state accepted the early risks, as economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron's theory of late development predicts.
An educated, commercial society. Modern industry could draw on institutions and skills developed during the preceding 265 years of Tokugawa military rule. Edo, today's Tokyo, and Osaka were large cities; rice, silk and cotton circulated in national markets; merchant houses such as Mitsui dated from the seventeenth century. Perhaps 40 percent of boys had received some schooling. Rural households already spun, wove and reeled silk from cocoons for sale. These activities supplied workers, managers, capital and customers for new enterprises.
Silk paid for machines. Imported machinery, ships and Indian raw cotton had to be paid for in foreign currency. Japan's great export, raw silk, earned it. Disease devastated European silkworms in the 1860s and helped Japanese trade. Young women in Nagano and Gunma reeled thread from cocoons, and the silk traveled through Yokohama to France and the United States. Their textile labor helped finance further light industry and heavy industries making steel and ships.
THE TURNING POINT
The Osaka Spinning Company, 1883. Government mills had been small and mostly unprofitable. The Osaka Spinning Company demonstrated a different possibility: private investors could earn steady profits from industry on a large scale. In 1883 Shibusawa Eiichi, a former official turned banker, raised money from aristocrats and merchants and imported 10,500 spindles, rods that twist fiber into thread. Steam powered the machines, and two shifts kept them running day and night. From 1886 electric light helped make that possible. Investors copied the profitable mill around Osaka. Within fifteen years Japan had changed from importing cotton yarn to exporting it. Industrialization could now proceed through the pursuit of profit as well as government policy.
What it changed
Japan competes in Asian markets. By the 1900s Japanese cotton yarn and cloth were competing against British and Indian goods in China and Korea. Japanese shipping lines carried Indian cotton to Osaka, and reformers from China to India studied Japan's example. It was the first Asian country to beat the industrial West at its own trade in Asian markets. In a world economy that assigned much of Asia the role of raw-material supplier, Japan alone had escaped that role, showing that the industrial gap could be closed.
Empire becomes part of the economy. The empire supplied Japan on terms set for Japanese benefit. Taiwan provided sugar and rice, Korea rice and land, and the Japanese-run South Manchuria Railway coal and soya beans. Colonial authorities built railways and factories for Japanese purposes and treated resistance harshly. Many Korean farmers lost land through the colonial survey of 1910–18 and later emigrated to Japan and Manchuria as cheap labor. Japan had used industrial strength to escape colonial rule; it then imposed rule on its neighbors to feed that industry.
Regulation arrives a generation late. Industrial growth exposed people with little power to serious costs. Communities protested pollution from the Ashio copper mine, mill girls struck, and the government's 1903 survey documented factory conditions. Japan passed its first Factory Act in 1911, limiting the hours of women and children, though enforcement began only in 1916. As in Britain, regulation followed industrial growth by a generation.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — How far was Japan’s industrialisation the achievement of the Meiji state?
The Meiji state made decisive early choices. Within a generation it abolished the domains of the feudal lords, raised taxes for modernization, built railways and telegraphs, founded factories including Tomioka and Yawata, and hired foreign experts. Alexander Gerschenkron's model of late development anticipates this kind of intervention. But government factories were not the whole industrial economy. Many lost money and were sold cheaply to private firms in the 1880s. Cotton spinning and silk reeling, the unwinding of thread from cocoons, earned foreign currency and grew mainly through private investment, from Shibusawa's Osaka Spinning Company to thousands of rural silk workshops. Thomas Smith emphasized state enterprise; Penelope Francks and others have drawn attention to markets, merchants and literacy inherited from the Tokugawa shoguns, military rulers until 1868, and to young women's labor. The state set direction and removed obstacles; private enterprise and women's work did much of the rest. State action can accelerate late industrialization, but it needs a society able to respond.
An interesting fact
In 1872 Tomioka's recruiters faced a rumor that French staff drank young women's blood. They had been seen drinking red wine. To reassure families, the mill's first director, Odaka Atsutada, enrolled his own daughter Yū, then about fourteen, among the first trainees; other officials followed. Japanese carpenters and tilers built the brick mill to a French design. The buildings still stand, and in 2014 UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural agency, listed the mill as a World Heritage Site. A factory needed workers and their families' trust as well as machines.
Related
THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE
Get the printable study guide for The Industrial Revolution free. I’ll send you a few short letters, then one when a new atlas opens. That’s all. — Paul
NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME