Meiji Industries
"...an almost purely agrarian society into a predominantly industrial one within a generation. No Asian nation has yet duplicated this feat."
-Thomas C. Smith, Professor of History, Emeritus at Berkeley
-Thomas C. Smith, Professor of History, Emeritus at Berkeley
"Prior to the Meiji Restoration most Japanese got about on foot
… Most long distance transportation, in Japan, especially for shipping goods,
was done through coastal Shipping networks. The greatest impact on land
transportation ... was the development of a railroad." (Wittner)
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It’s like a dream!
Having raced past the fifty-three post stations [of the old Tokaido], we rest in a Kobe inn, Thanks to the fact that trains give people wings. -Owada Takeki, Classic Japanese Scholar, 1900 |
Japan Railway, 1898
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"By the late 1880s, Japan's railway lines extended over one thousand miles. By 1900 the total stood in excess of thirty-four hundred miles. The building of this rail system was a formidable technical feat in a mountainous country. And the rail system promoted other industrial ventures, most importantly textiles and coal mining, by lowering the transport cost of raw materials to factories and cutting the cost of sending finished goods to domestic markets and to harbors for export." (Gordon)
"Steam train" by Utagawa Hiroshige III, 1875
"Simply put, railroads had the power to transform society."
-Steven Ericson, Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan
-Steven Ericson, Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan
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"Accompanying the development and spread of the railroad was the telegraph, of which a national network was largely complete by 1878 … As with the railroad, Meiji officials in general and especially those in the Ministry of Public Works understood the strategic and economic importance of the telegraph system." (Wittner)
The Telegraph System of Japan
(Courtesy of Japan National Archives)
(Courtesy of Japan National Archives)
Globally Scaled Textile Industry
"The textile industry played a central role in Japan’s emergence onto the international stage as a modern economic and industrial power after opening its ports to foreign trade in the mid-19th century. Textile production methods were rapidly modernized and mechanized, while a new form of textile production emerged that catered specifically to the new overseas market. [They] entranced Western audiences with their sophisticated designs and brilliant craftsmanship, and played a thriving part in Japan’s export trade and in raising the profile of Japan abroad ... these textiles became some of Japan’s best-known export items."
-Clare Pollard, curator of Japanese art, Ashmolean Museum |
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"Silk Reeling Machine at the Japanese National Industrial Exposition”
by Utagawa Kuniaki II, October 1877
by Utagawa Kuniaki II, October 1877
"Industrialization was led by the textile industry. From the 1880s through 1913, output of silk quadrupled ... three-fourths of these threads were produced by machine, whereas earlier most silk had been reeled by hand. In addition, about three-fourths of silk output was being exported each year. Production of cotton threads increased at similar rates ... And about half of the cotton output came to be exported, mainly to China and Korea." (Gordon)
Spinners were taught an official message by the mill supervisors:
Raw silk. Reel, reel the thread. Thread is the treasure of the empire! More than a hundred million yen worth of exports, What can be better than silk thread? |
Silk Workers, 1900s Meiji Era
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Coal and Metal Mining
"Coal and metal mining was a second leading sector in Japan's early industrial era. Mineral production in Japan increased 700 percent from 1876 to 1896. After textile mills, mines were the nation's major employers of work." (Gordon)
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"As with so many other facets of Meiji industrial
development, the modernization of mining, whether iron, non-ferrous metal, or coal,
was undertaken with several objectives in mind … The result was an overall
program that sought to increase and regulate the supply of gold, silver and
copper for currency, to export copper and coal to foreign markets, to identify and
exploit sources of copper iron and coal for the military, and to increase iron
production to build ‘modern’ nation." (Wittner) Of course, mining quickly took flight, as coal had initially been the primary desire of the United States during its effort to open Japan.
Photos of Niihama Smelting Furnace of Besshi Copper Mine
(Courtesy of National Archives of Japan)
(Courtesy of National Archives of Japan)
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"The most distinctive feature of Japan's emerging system of capitalism was the central role played by monopolies that later came to be called zaibatsu (the term literally translates as 'financial clique') ... Their founders exploited long-standing close ties to the government and synergistic links between key industries to found their business empires. The Mitsui family, for example, had been dry-goods retailers in Kyoto and Edo since the 1670s ... the [minister of public works] offered Mitsui Trading Company an exclusive contract for sale of coal from the government's Miike Mine." (Gordon) As he neatly put it: 'We will not be tight. You can acquire the coal at cost price and get started on it directly.'
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Miike Mine (Courtesy of University of Washington)
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The zaibatsu of the private sector were trusted by the state with domestic fortunes, and served to build and maintain large corporations. Thus, the private sector largely provided the nation with its sought after wealth, however if not for the complementary hand of the state, these financial cliques would not have been able to take flight in their efforts.
Subsequent Labor Conditions
"More than four out of five textile workers were women. They typically were required to live in company owned dormitories that were locked at night. When fires occasionally broke out, this literally became death traps ... They worked twelve to fourteen hours a day or more ... Their wages were 50 to 70 percent of those pad to men in the same industry ... Finally, the poorly ventilated mills were incubators of disease, especially tuberculosis, which was the AIDS of its day: debilitating, incurable and fatal." (Gordon)
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Improvised songs from women workers in mostly textile factories reveal their mixed and indignant emotions towards industrial laboring:
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"The alternative to textile labor was not a life of leisure. Those who stayed with their families in rural villages had to help out with equally or more demanding farm labor." (Gordon)
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Meiji Era Textile Workers
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