Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
In the past decade or so there have been several critical revisions of the long-accepted view of the important role of the state in Japan's economic development and programme of modernization generally. Professor Harry Oshima has attempted to demolish the argument that the Meiji governments' policies were at all economically beneficial. On the contrary, he has said, those policies retarded growth, particularly through their neglect of agriculture. Professor Hugh Patrick has cautioned us against giving the Meiji governments too much credit for the development of the banking system. Private enterprise, he has insisted, was also important. Most recently, Professor Kozo Yamamura has delivered yet another broadside against what he considers the myths of Japanese economic history. This time he criticizes the view that the government, by intervening and pioneering model plants, played a significant role in Meiji Japan's industrial dcvelopment.
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2 Patrick, Hugh T., ‘Japan, 1868–1914’, in Cameron, Rondo et al. ,, Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization (Oxford, 1967), pp. 239–89.Google Scholar
3 Yamamura, Kozo, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), esp. pp. 137–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 This paper draws heavily on the following Japanese works: Kazunori, Echigo, Nihon Zōsen kōgyō-ron (The Japanese Shipbuilding Industry) (Tokyo, 1956);Google ScholarTakehei, Miyashita, ‘Zōsen kōgyō no hatten to k1ōzō’ (The Structure and Growth of the Shipbuilding Industry), in Arisawa, Hiromi (ed.), Gendai Nihon sangyō kōza (A Symposium on Modern Japanese Industry), Vol. V: Kikai kōgyō (Machine Industries), Pt I (Tokyo, 1961);Google ScholarEiichi, Kaneko, Gendai Nihon sangyō hattatsu-shi (A History of the Development of Modern Japanese Industry), Vol. IX: Zōsen (Shipbuilding) (Tokyo, 1964.)Google Scholar