Industrialization in Japan, 1868-1940
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This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Health and Welfare during Industrialization Volume Author/Editor: Richard H. Steckel and Roderick Floud, Eds. Volume Publisher: University of Chicago Press Volume ISBN: 0-226-77156-3 Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/stec97-1 Publication Date: January 1997 Chapter Title: Differential Structure, Differential Health: Industrialization in Japan, 1868-1940 Chapter Author: Gail Honda Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c7433 Chapter pages in book: (p. 251 - 284) 7 Differential Structure, Differential Health: Industrialization in Japan, 1868-1 940 Gail Honda 7.1 Introduction The most arresting characteristics of Japan’s industrialization through the mid-twentieth century are its strongly military character and the development of a differential structure between traditional and modem sectors. The begin- ning of Japan’s modem economic growth is often associated with the Meiji Ishin, a political, social, and economic upheaval that took place over several decades in the late nineteenth century. During this time, the bakuhan regime, which had been in power since 1600, was overthrown in numerous coups d’Ctat. In its place, a government was created in 1868 that restored authority to the emperor.’ In order to stave off the encroaching colonization they observed around them in Asia, the new leaders concentrated their efforts on building a “rich country and strong army” Cfukoku kyydhei). To this end they promulgated a constitution in 1889 that granted power to the bureaucracy and military, es- tablished compulsory education and conscription, and promoted industry by importing technology and scientific knowledge from the West. During the initial decades of the Meiji period (1868-1926) the government established a national banking system and standardized currency issued by the central Bank of Japan. The development of extensive sea transportation and railroad networks followed, which facilitated the integration of national mar- kets. The financial and transportation infrastructure speeded the expansion of the mining and textile industries, as the government sold its initial interests in technology imported from Europe and the United States to private concerns. Gail Honda is director of the Program in Applied Quantitative Research and a research associate of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Ted Shay, who was a Ph.D. candidate in the Depart- ment of Economics at Harvard University when he passed away in 1989. 1. Meiji is the name of the emperor at the time, hence the name Meiji Ishin, which can be translated as Meiji Restoration. 251 252 Gail Honda Then the boom of World War I ushered in a period of increased production, a rise in employment in secondary industries, and the development of heavy and chemical industries spurred by the harnessing and generation of electric power. Japan’s industrial activities were largely concentrated in a narrow urban belt extending from Eky6 on the eastern half of the main island of Honshii, through Nagoya and Osaka in western Honshii, to Fukuoka in the northern section of Kyiishii. By 1940 Japan had built a colonial empire that included Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria, and an economic infrastructure large enough to wage serious war with the Western allies and extend its control through north China, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands. Japan’s imperialist drive through Asia began in the Meiji period with the Taiwan expedition in 1874 and ended with the staggering blows that the United States dealt Japan finally to end the Pacific War. For all the excitement generated during the Meiji period over building a new state founded on principles of civilization, enlightenment, and human rights, for all the effort channeled into creating a new kind of em- peror--a spiritual and timeless head of a divine people united by a pure and native soul-for all the capital, financial and human, invested in the drive to industrialize, Japan’s modern economic growth led not to a liberal democratic society but to an unfree people governed by an expansionist military regime and ruled by an absolutist imperial system. Closely linked to military expansion was the development of large-scale in- dustry in communication, transportation, banking, trade, arms, chemicals, and metallurgy. Many of these industries were the cornerstones of enormous con- glomerates (zaibatsu) such as Sumitomo (Bank, Metals, Rubber, Construction) and Mitsubishi (Bank, Heavy Industries, Motor, Petrochemical, and Trading). Because these industries served the needs of the state, powerful bureaucra- cies-Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Ministry of Munitions, Ministry of Transportation-were established to facilitate financing and man- age output to meet national goals. Capital investment in plant and facilities, research and development, and rationalization of operations greatly boosted the productivity of these so-called modern industries relative to agriculture and traditional or small-scale industries. Real wage differentials between em- ployees of the modem sector and those of the agricultural and traditional sec- tors reflected the productivity differentials. The industrial boom of World War I and the ensuing agricultural depression of the 1920s created a skilled labor shortage in the modem sector and excess labor in the traditional, which further widened productivity and real wage differentials. In addition, monopolistic po- sitions held by the zaibatsu enabled them to take advantage of lower wages by subcontracting work to small-scale firms. By the mid- 1930s the widening differentials in productivity and real wages between the modem and traditional sectors (hereafter referred to as the “differential structure”) had become a pro- nounced characteristic of the Japanese economy, to the detriment of agriculture and the traditional sector. 253 Industrialization in Japan, 1868-1940 The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of militarization and formation of the differential structure on the health and well-being of the Japa- nese people during the period of industrialization from the Meiji Zshin through the Pacific War. The hypotheses driving the analysis are (1) investment in the military diverted funds that would otherwise have gone into improving the health of the people, such as investment in social welfare, public health tech- nology, and sanitation, which resulted in poorer health, and (2) just as real wages reflected the gaps in technology between the modem and traditional sectors, so gaps in measures of health-nutritional status, mortality, and fertil- ity-reflected gaps in real wages, leading to the formation of a differential structure in health. The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows: section 7.2 discusses the health and welfare of the Japanese people before industrialization; section 7.3 introduces the foundation of modem economic growth and its attendant wars and epidemics; section 7.4 looks at the relationship between industrialization and nutritional status with respect to stature, diet and nutrition, and child growth; section 7.5 analyzes differential health; and section 7.6 concludes with a discussion of the results in the light of the proposed hypotheses. 7.2 Health and Welfare before Industrialization, 1600-1868 7.2.1 Bakuhan Political Economy Though the first power looms that arrived from England in the 1880s might be interpreted as the seeds of Japan’s industrial revolution, factors that eased the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society had long been devel- oping during the Tokugawa period ( 1600-1868).2 The bakuhan government in power during the Tokugawa period was characterized by a decentralized sys- tem of roughly 150 feudal lords (daimyd) who controlled their respective fiefs (han), collected taxes from the peasants residing in their domains, and paid them to the military seat of power (bakufu). In turn, to offset the autonomy granted to the daimyd and to minimize risk of collusion among them, the ba- kufu required them to reside for six months out of the year in the capital city of Edo (now T6ky6) and often kept their families there as hostages. Accompa- nied by an entourage of servants, vassals, and flagbearers (the greater the en- tourage, the greater the perceived status), the daimyd, in their conspicuous con- sumption during the biannual treks to and from their han, contributed to the development of a mobile population and sophisticated commercial economy by the mid-nineteenth century. Ogyn Sorai (1666-1728), counsel to the bakufu and arguably the most in- fluential intellectual of the eighteenth century, caustically observed that the 2. This period is named after Tokugawa Ieyasu, the legendary warrior who subdued his rivals and unified the entire country in 1600. 254 Gail Honda constant transit of the daimyd was turning the entire samurai class into perma- nent hotel guests, so that “even a single chopstick had to be paid The inns, restaurants, teahouses, and shops selling provisions that sprang up along the well-trodden routes leading to Edo were run or financed by the merchants, considered the lowest of all four classes (samurai-farmer-artisan-merchant) be- cause of their association with money and profit. Moreover, since samurai lived on fixed stipends decreed by the bakufu they could afford their extravagant lifestyles only by incurring large debts with the merchant class. Thus,