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The Labor-Intensive Path: Wages, Incomes, and the Work Year in Japan, 1610–1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2022

Yuzuru Kumon
Yuzuru Kumon*
Affiliation:
Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France. E-mail: yuzuru.kumon@iast.fr.
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Abstract

I use new evidence from servant contracts, 1610–1890, to estimate male farm wages and the length of the work year in Japan. I show Japanese laborers were surprisingly poor and could only sustain 2–3 adults relative to 7 adults for the English. Japanese wages were the lowest among pre-industrial societies and this was driven by Malthusian population pressures. I also estimate the work year and find peasants worked 325 days a year by 1700, predating the “industrious” revolution in Europe. The findings imply Japan had a distinct labor-intensive path to industrialization, utilizing cheap labor over a long work year.

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Article
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 368 - 402
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

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Footnotes

Yuzuru Kumon acknowledges IAST funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program). I would like to thank Kazutoshi Tomizen who helped me interpret the original sources. I also thank Gregory Clark, Fabian Drixler, and Debin Ma, and three anonymous referees for feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

References

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