Editing Meiji era (section)

== Economy ==
{{Main || Industrial Revolution#Japan}}{{see also|Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining}}
[[File:KaitakushiSapporoHonchosha1873-restoration.jpg|thumb|right|[[Hokkaidō Development Commission]] [[Sapporo]] Main Office ([[Historical Village of Hokkaido]])]]
The [[Industrial Revolution]] in Japan occurred during the Meiji era. The industrial revolution began around 1870 as Meiji era leaders decided to catch up with the West. The government built railroads, improved roads, and inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country for further development. It inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe, and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages in Japan (O-yatoi gaikokujin).

In 1871, a group of Japanese politicians known as the [[Iwakura Mission]] toured Europe and the US to learn western ways. The result was a deliberate state-led industrialization policy to enable Japan to quickly catch up.

Japan developed modern industry through direct state intervention.<ref name=":022">{{Cite book |last=Hirata |first=Koji |title=Making Mao's Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism |date=2024 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-009-38227-4 |series=Cambridge Studies in the History of the People's Republic of China series |location=New York, NY}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=8-9}} [[State-owned enterprise|Government-owned enterprises]] were important to the development of key economic sectors like railways.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=9}} Through government connections, major private enterprises received various forms of financial support from the state.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=9}}

Modern industry first appeared in textiles, including cotton and especially silk, which was based in home workshops in rural areas.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Allen|first=George Cyril|title=A short economic history of modern Japan, 1867-1937|date=1972|publisher=Allen and Unwin|isbn=0-04-330201-7|edition=3rd rev.|location=London|oclc=533080}}</ref> Due to the importing of new textile manufacturing technology from Europe, between 1886 and 1897, Japan's total value of yarn output rose from 12 million to 176 million yen. In 1886, 62% of yarn in Japan was imported; by 1902, most yarn was produced locally. By 1913, Japan was producing 672 million pounds of yarn per year, becoming the world's fourth-largest exporter of cotton yarn.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor|last=Landes|first=David S.|publisher=Norton|year=1999|location=New York|pages=379–80}}</ref>

The first railway was opened between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872. The rail system was rapidly developed throughout Japan well into the twentieth century. The introduction of railway transportation led to more efficient production due to the decrease in transport costs, allowing manufacturing firms to move into more populated interior regions of Japan in search for labor input. The railway also enabled newfound access to raw materials that had previously been too difficult or too costly to transport.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tang|first=John P.|date=September 2014|title=Railroad Expansion and Industrialization: Evidence from Meiji Japan|journal=The Journal of Economic History|volume= 74|issue=3|pages=863–886|via=CRKN Cambridge University Press Journals|doi=10.1017/S002205071400062X|s2cid=154701739}}</ref>
 
There were at least two reasons for the speed of Japan's modernization: the employment of more than 3,000 foreign experts (called ''[[o-yatoi gaikokujin]]'' or 'hired foreigners') in a variety of specialist fields such as teaching foreign languages, science, engineering, the army and navy, among others; and the dispatch of many Japanese students overseas to Europe and America, based on the fifth and last article of the Charter Oath of 1868: 'Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundations of Imperial rule.' The process of modernization was closely monitored and heavily subsidized by the Meiji government, enhancing the power of the great [[zaibatsu]] firms such as [[Mitsui]] and [[Mitsubishi]].

[[File:Tokyo Industrial Exhibition.JPG|thumb|1907 Tokyo Industrial Exhibition]]
Hand in hand, the zaibatsu and government led Japan through the process of industrialization, borrowing technology and economic policy from the West. Japan gradually took control of much of Asia's market for manufactured goods, beginning with textiles. The economic structure became very [[mercantilism|mercantilistic]], importing raw materials and exporting finished products—a reflection of Japan's relative poverty in raw materials.

[[File:Tsurumai Park 1910.jpg|thumb|[[Tsuruma Park]], 1910; in January 1873 the [[Dajō-kan]] issued a notice providing for the establishment of public parks, that of [[Ueno Park]] following shortly after.<ref name="Diet">{{cite web |url=https://www.ndl.go.jp/scenery/e/column/tokyo/ueno-park.html |title=Ueno Park |publisher=[[National Diet Library]] |access-date=8 September 2020}}</ref>]]

Other economic reforms passed by the government included the creation of a unified modern currency based on the yen, banking, commercial and tax laws, stock exchanges, and a communications network. Establishment of a modern institutional framework conductive to an advanced capitalist economy took time, but was completed by the 1890s, by which time the government had largely relinquished direct control of the modernization process, primarily for budgetary reasons. The [[Land Tax Reform (Japan 1873)|Land Tax Reform]] of 1873 was another significant fiscal reform by the Meiji government, establishing the right of private land ownership for the first time in Japan's history.

Many of the former daimyo, whose pensions had been paid in a lump sum, benefited greatly through investments they made in emerging industries. Those who had been informally involved in foreign trade before the Meiji Restoration also flourished. Old [[bakufu]]-serving firms that clung to their traditional ways failed in the new business environment.

The industrial economy continued to expand rapidly, until about 1920, due to inputs of advanced Western technology and large private investments. By World War I, Japan had become a major industrial nation.