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The Labor Force in Meiji Economic Growth: A Quantitative Study of Yamanashi Prefecture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Arlon Tussing
Affiliation:
University of Alaska

Extract

Economic development and “modernization” have certain universal consequences for the structure and organization of the labor force. The history of each advanced country shows a shift of population out of agriculture and the replacement of family enterprise and particularistic employment relationships by large enterprise and wage labor. But the pace and completeness of these inevitable changes have varied widely among different countries.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1966

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References

1 Umemura, (,) Mataji, , Chingin, Koyō, Nōgyō (“Wages, Employment, Agriculture”; Tokyo: Taimeido, 1961).Google Scholar

2 Rosovsky, Henry and Ohkawa, Kazushi, “The Indigenous Components of the Modern Japanese Economy,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, IX (Apr. 1961), 476501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Abegglen, James C., The Japanese Factory: Aspects of Its Social Organization (New York: Free Press [Macmillan], 1958).Google Scholar

4 Tōkeiin, Kai (no) Kuni Meiji 12-nen Jimbetsu (no) Shirabe (“Census of Individuals in the Province of Kai”; Tokyo, 1882).

5 Yamaguchi, (,) Kazuo, , Meiji Zenki Keizai no Bunseki (“An Analysis of Early Meiji Economy”; Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1956).Google Scholar

6 “Farm household” (nōka or nōgyō setai) is used here as it is in the Japanese data, as a household in which at least one member is engaged in agriculture.

7 This point is emphasized by Ranis: “Reserves of productivity usually do exist somewhere in the underdeveloped economy …. Taking up the slack in any economy means making potential increments of productivity socially available …. In the case of Japan, slack was in evidence mainly in the form of excess labor on the land and in reserves of productivity in the land.” Ranis, Gustav, “The Financing of Japanese Economic Development,” Economic History Review, XI (Apr. 1959).Google Scholar

8 Among these would be included Umemura (,) Mataji (cited in n. 1) and the following works: Ohkawa, Kazushi, Growth Rate of the Japanese Economy (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1957)Google Scholar; Shinohara, (,) Miyohei, , Nihon Keizai no Seichō to Junkan (“Growth and Cycles in the Japanese Economy”; Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1961)Google Scholar; Yamada, (,) Yūzō, , Nihon Kokumin Shotoku Suikei Shiryō (“Comprehensive Survey of National Income Data for Japan”; Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 1957).Google Scholar

9 Hijikata (,) Shigeyoshi, “Shokugyōbetsu Jinkō no Hensen o Tsūjite Mitaru Shitsugyō Mondai” (“The Unemployment Problem Seen Through Changes in the Employed Population by Industry”), Shakai Seisaku Jihō (Sept. 1929).

10 Hemmi (,) Kenzō, “Nōgyō Jinkō no Kōteisei” (“The Constancy of the Agricultural Population”) and “Nōgyō Yūgyō Jinkō no Suikei” (“Estimates of the Employed Population in Agriculture”), both in Tōbata, (,) Seiichi, , and Ohkawa, (,) Kazushi, , Nihon no Keizai to Nōgyō (“Japan's Economy and Agriculture”; Vol. I, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1956).Google Scholar

11 Tōkeiin (cited in n. 4).

12 Tōkeikyoku, Naikaku, Taishō 9-nen Kokusei Chōsa Hōkoku: Zenkoku no Bu dai 8—Shokugyō (“Report of the 1920 Population Census: Nationwide, Part 8—Occupations”; Tokyo, 1934).Google Scholar

13 A complete description of the techniques used to estimate population, labor force, and FTE by sector can be seen in ch. iii and in the appendix of my unpublished doctoral dissertation, “Employment and Wages in Japanese Economic Development: A Quantitative Study of Yamanashi Prefecture in the Meiji Era” (University of Washington, 1965).Google Scholar

14 Following Rosovsky and Ohkawa (cited in n. 2) we have considered both the nature of the product or service and the productive organization in classifying activities into traditional (indigenous) or modern components. Our definition of a traditional product is slightly different from theirs; here a traditional item is one which was regularly available before 1859. Some products must be regarded as “hybrids” of traditional and modern—for instance, machine-reeled silk, a “traditional” product manufactured at least partially by modern techniques. Some products, like beef and clocks, were certainly produced in Japan in Tokugawa times but only in minute quantities, and the increase in their production and consumption can hardly be distinquished from that of completely new or foreign products. These cases have been classified here as “ambiguous,” along with those services which combine both modern and traditional elements—for instance, the retail sale, in traditional family enterprises, of modern or imported goods. Moreover, there were “teachers” and “soldiers” in pre-Meiji Japan, but whether this fact justifies regarding a primary school teacher or an army officer as pursuing an “indigenous” calling is a purely arbitrary matter; such occupations too have been classified as “ambiguous” cases. All occupations listed specifically as occurring in kaisha (companies) were classified as modern.

15 The rounded figures for 1920 here and following are a result of the rough division of some of the 244 occupational categories in the 1920 census which clearly lumped together indigenous and modern-type activities. The 774 categories in the 1879 census could be grouped according to the preceding definitions with considerable confidence.

16 For a classic first-hand account of the labor market in the cotton-spinning industry in the first decades of this century, see Hosoi, (,) Wakizō, , Jokō Aishi (“The Sorry History of the Factory Girls”; Tokyo: Iwanami, 1925).Google Scholar

17 Ōkōchi, Kazuo, Labor in Modern Japan (Tokyo: Science Council of Japan, 1958).Google Scholar

18 Sumiya, (,) Mikio, , Nihon Chin Rōdō Shiron (“Dissertation on the History of Wage Labor in Japan”; Tokyo: Tōdai Gakujutsu Sōsho, 1955).Google Scholar

19 Cited in n. 1.

20 Real daily wage rates for agricultural labor did not fall but moved roughly in the same fashion as daily wage rates in manufacturing. These rates, however, reflect supply and demand conditions at the seasonal peaks and are not an indicator of the year-round marginal productivity of agricultural labor but rather of wages in occupations alternative to agriculture at those times of year in which the labor market was tightest.

21 The values ranked in this case were the arithmetic means of the ratios between five-year arithmetic means of daily wages for each occupational category and those of female silk-reeling workers. Not all of the six five-year periods were available for every occupational category, and where values were missing within any one five-year period, the ratio was calculated for the remaining years.

22 The mean deduction for adult female workers alone was 9.2 sen, but we could not calculate mean expenditures separately by age and sex.

23 The slogan of the militant nationalists, “Expel the barbarians.”

24 Fukuzawa, (,) Yukichi, , “Tōjin Ōrai” (“Coming and Going of the Foreigners”) in Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshū (“Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi”; Tokyo: Iwanami, 1951), Vol. I.Google Scholar