Conclusion

Global quantitative comparisons continue to conclude that, by the early-modern period, Japan, like China, already lagged behind northern Europe in terms of the conditions for sustained economic growth, so that Japanese industrialisation must be interpreted as ‘catching up’ on the basis of ‘borrowing’ from the West. However, when viewed in a Great Divergence light, the research brought together in this book can be seen as showing how the development of Japan’s pre-industrial economy achieved similar ends to its European counterparts, if along a different and not entirely commensurable path. This involved the intensified utilisation of labour resources to overcome limitations to Smithian growth and prepared the ground for a form of industrialisation in which small-scale labour-intensive production, based on indigenous forms of organisation and technology, played a major role. As a result, in comparison with Europe, markets functioned in different ways, consumption patterns differed, and the institutional structure of government and economy was distinctive. Nonetheless, while this may make quantitative comparison of the conditions for growth difficult, it did not prevent Japan from initiating a path to industrialisation which was eventually, as it spread through Asia, to transform the world economy.