Makes Japanese sources accessible in EnglishAlthough much of the work on Japanese economic history is inaccessible to Westerners, many of Japan's leading economic historians have published widely in English. Combined with the work of Western economists who can utilize Japanese-language sources, this series assembles a wide range of English-language articles on the key issues in Japanese economic development. Individual volumes cover the interwar period, postwar reconstruction and growth, the textile industry, demographics, agriculture, trade, and the rise of commerce and "protoindustry" in the Tokugawa era. Aninformation-packed classroom and research resource An introductory essay in each volume discusses the significance of the articles, compares various economic development in Japan with those in other countries, and puts studies in the context of similar studies in Europe. A versatile research resource, this 7-volume set is a veritable gold mine of hard-to-find information and data from diverse sources and a godsend to everyone interested in comparative economic and social history. Professors will appreciate the collection because it gives them instant access to less familiar English-language sources and is an easy way to introduce students to doing their own research. Students will appreciate the many articles as a mother lode of information for reports and papers. Researchers will be pleased by the coverage of more than three centuries of Japanese history and life.

The most significant debate in global economic history over the past twenty years has dealt with the Great Divergence, the economic gap between different parts of the world. Thus far, this debate has focused on China, India and north-western Europe, particularly Great Britain. This book shifts the focus to ask how Japan became the only non-western county that managed, at least partially, to modernize its economy and start to industrialize in the 19th century. Using a range of empirical data, Peer Vries analyses the role of the state in Japan's economic growth from the Meiji Restoration to World War II, and asks whether Japan's economic success can be attributed to the rise of state power. Asserting that the state's involvement was fundamental in Japan's economic 'catching up', he demonstrates how this was built on legacies from the previous Tokugawa period. In this book, Vries deepens our understanding of the Great Divergence in global history by re-examining how Japan developed and modernized against the odds.

The idea has become popular that industrialisation in East Asia, in particular Japan, was fundamentally differently from Western industrialization because it would have been much more labour-intensive. This book shows that this claim is unfounded.

This volume explains the salient features of the Japanese labour market. The key idea in this book is integrated segmentation. Emphasis is upon segmentation: on the demand side, within the educational system and, on supply side, monitoring costs which underlie labour contracts. Using long run official government statistical evidence, it is argued that what is peculiar to Japan is the integration of segmented labour markets. By virtue of segmentation the Japanese labour market is deeply competitive. By virtue of integration it is highly cooperative.

This book, the first full account of Japan’s financial history and the Japanese gold standard in the pivotal years before World War II, provides a new perspective on the global political dynamics of the era by placing Japan, rather than Europe, at the center of the story. Focusing on the fall of liberalism in Japan in late 1931 and the global politics of money that were at the center of the crisis, Mark Metzler asks why successive Japanese governments from 1920 to 1931 carried out policies that deliberately induced deflation and depression. His search for answers stretches from Edo to London to the ragged borderlands of the Japanese empire and from the eighteenth century to the 1950s, integrating political and monetary analysis to shed light on the complex dynamics of money, empire, and global hegemony. His detailed and broad ranging account illuminates a range of issues including Japan’s involvement in the economic dynamics that shook interwar Europe, the character of U.S. isolationism, and the rise of fascism as an international phenomenon.