reasons for Japans growth? 1929-39?

[Blanquist]

this period saw extreme contractions in the usa, france, germany, uk etc.

but japan had amazing growth, only the ussr managed more.'


what was the source of this growth?

[Thirsty Crow]

this period saw extreme contractions in the usa, france, germany, uk etc.

but japan had amazing growth, only the ussr managed more.'


what was the source of this growth?
What's the source you're using? The claim seems suspicious since allegedly Japan never fully recovered from the crisis of the 90s and was effectively mired in stagnation, and furthermore, it's debt to GDP ratio is, I think, the highest in the world, leading to an associate of George Soros to claim Japan faces bankruptcy by 2017 and yen is to devalue sharply:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-15/ex-soros-adviser-fujimaki-says-japan-to-probably-default-by-2017.html

(I'm not necessarily agreeing with the perspective put forward by Soros' buddy)

Also, one cannot neglect the economic consequences of the tsunami.

EDIT: that's what you get when you fail to read the title properly: Sorry for that, disregard this post.

[Teacher]

Japan had made a commitment to industrial development and copied many aspects of the Western model (i.e., education, infrastructure) during the Meiji period. By the turn of the century the Japanese were able to regain control over their tariffs and use a great deal of state intervention and targeted industrial policy. They were not very dependent on Western direct investment or imports (unlike say Latin America).

However the real economic take-off in Japan did not occur until the postwar period. At the rate Japan was growing in the 1930s it would've taken them well over a hundred years to attain a standard of living on par with the Western powers.

[jookyle]

A large portion of it had to do with how their corporations were interconnected and basically were profit sharing(this kept up in one form or another until the 90's). What they also did was put certain regulations on themselves so that products and resources that could be made in Japan could only be made in Japan and couldn't be imported from elsewhere. But Japan didn't become a major economic power until it was given access to American markets several decades later.

[Blake's Baby]

So, major state intervention and investment between the wars, followed by American money flooding in in the post-war period, establishing it as another bulwark in Asia against the Soviet Union?

Yeah, that would probably do the trick.

[Psy]

Japan had made a commitment to industrial development and copied many aspects of the Western model (i.e., education, infrastructure) during the Meiji period. By the turn of the century the Japanese were able to regain control over their tariffs and use a great deal of state intervention and targeted industrial policy. They were not very dependent on Western direct investment or imports (unlike say Latin America).

Actually they were dependant on imports of raw materials this was the primary issue behind Japan's military expansion, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere basically was the Japanese ruling class looking to secure access to the raw resources required to fuel industry in Japan.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Massive amounts of Wealth from the Colonial Primitive Accumulation.

[Geiseric]

I would presume that their exploits in northern china, the philipines, and south east asia secured the same growth as in any imperialist war.

[Teacher]

Actually they were dependant on imports of raw materials this was the primary issue behind Japan's military expansion, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere basically was the Japanese ruling class looking to secure access to the raw resources required to fuel industry in Japan.

You are right, I meant to say exports. The Japanese managed to create a national market for its manufactured goods and was not dependent on exporting primary products to the industrialized world like the "banana republics" of Latin America (hence Latin America being hurt particularly bad by the Great Depression because their export-dependent economies no longer had anybody to sell to).

Japan being a very resource poor group of islands definitely contributed to their quick dive into imperialism.

[Teacher]

Japan was also pretty smart in the way they borrowed from the industrialized world from what I understand. In Global Economic History Robert C. Allen argues that many countries who attempted to copy industrial technological methods from the West did not adapt the technology to their local conditions.

Western industrial models were designed for high-wage economies and therefore economized on labor and were very capital-intensive. Since labor was cheap and abundant in Japan, they adapted manufacturing techniques to economize on capital instead. They made their manufacturing system more "lean."

One innovation was "just in time" production, in which companies attempt to produce goods in more of an "on demand" fashion rather than by piling up huge inventories. Another example: when the Japanese designed the Zero (their main fighter plane in WW II) they simply made the plane lighter rather than investing in researching and creating more powerful engines.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Japan being a very resource poor group of islands definitely contributed to their quick dive into imperialism.

Incorrect, you mean Colonialism. Colonialism was the violent expansion into the third world (of advanced feudal and beginning capitalist societies; Japan being resource poor definitely contributed to Colonialism being introduced early), by the early bourgeoisie, to attain the resources needed to sustain the growth of Capital's strength versus feudalism, as only capitalism was able to industrialise nations and this requires vast resources needed from the third world. Only later with the establishment of capitalism in the third world, did imperialism (monoply capitalism) replace colonialism.

Imperialism (the monopolistic stage of capital of one nation state's exploitation of other undeveloped nation states workers), is characteristic of not having to violently control and occupy resource rich countries (unlike Colonialism) as markets and commodity production that were progressively introduced to the third world during colonialism, already are installed with their own bourgeois state not focusing on bringing back natural resources to develop the own nation state, but accumulate Capital to their Corporation within an already market world!

[Teacher]

Incorrect, you mean Colonialism. Colonialism was the violent expansion into the third world (of advanced feudal and beginning capitalist societies; Japan being resource poor definitely contributed to Colonialism being introduced early), by the early bourgeoisie, to attain the resources needed to sustain the growth of Capital's strength versus feudalism, as only capitalism was able to industrialise nations and this requires vast resources needed from the third world. Only later with the establishment of capitalism in the third world, did imperialism (monoply capitalism) replace colonialism.

Imperialism is characteristic of not having to anymore violently conquer and control resource rich countries and in fact whole continents with armies to survive, but use the markets that were progressively introduced to the third world during colonialism, to not bring back natural resources, but Capital!

I don't think I agree with this distinction, it would be an interesting thread (don't want to derail here).

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I don't think I agree with this distinction, it would be an interesting thread (don't want to derail here).

Well, i can tell you that the goal of capitalists in the 17th, 18th and 19th century was not to first export their model of capital, but to outcompete feudalism nationally. Since feudal ruling classes had already started with taking back products from the third world (by slaves mostly in the colonies) Capitalists had the goal to simply attain the resources they needed to first develop capitalism in their own country in competition with feudalism to replace kings as the ruling class. And Capitalists were able to a lot more successfully develop the economies than feudalism. Colonialism was basically a feudal order, in the end controlled by Capitalism but rather quickly turned into global market Capitalism and western monopoly capitalism, Imperialism.

But all the while that the capitalist class in the west replaced the feudal ruling classes, the colonies became increasingly turned to free market economies so that the Capitalists increasingly did not have to violently suppress their colonial populations with their own armies, but developed the bourgeoisies, capitalism and commodity production in the third world itself to create Imperialism (a good example of this is the campesino class in Latin America that were hired by the Spanish crown to function as merchant capitalists and sell slaves to the Spanish Colonialists; this campesino merchant class developed into the national bourgeoisie of these third world countries, albeit Western monopoly capitalism, Imperialism, is still dominant in the third world). This Imperialism has evolved to such an extent that we virtually now have only very vague national bourgeoisies, with corporations witting all around the globe's market economies; we have international monopolised capital, a highly advanced stage of Imperialism.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I can recommend reading "Open Veins of Latin America" forgot the author, but a great book.

[Psy]

Japan was also pretty smart in the way they borrowed from the industrialized world from what I understand. In Global Economic History Robert C. Allen argues that many countries who attempted to copy industrial technological methods from the West did not adapt the technology to their local conditions.

Western industrial models were designed for high-wage economies and therefore economized on labor and were very capital-intensive. Since labor was cheap and abundant in Japan, they adapted manufacturing techniques to economize on capital instead. They made their manufacturing system more "lean."

One innovation was "just in time" production, in which companies attempt to produce goods in more of an "on demand" fashion rather than by piling up huge inventories. Another example: when the Japanese designed the Zero (their main fighter plane in WW II) they simply made the plane lighter rather than investing in researching and creating more powerful engines.
Yet this meant weak industrial capacity, Japan struggled to industrialize Manchuria due to this lack of industrial might.

[A Marxist Historian]

Japan had made a commitment to industrial development and copied many aspects of the Western model (i.e., education, infrastructure) during the Meiji period. By the turn of the century the Japanese were able to regain control over their tariffs and use a great deal of state intervention and targeted industrial policy. They were not very dependent on Western direct investment or imports (unlike say Latin America).

However the real economic take-off in Japan did not occur until the postwar period. At the rate Japan was growing in the 1930s it would've taken them well over a hundred years to attain a standard of living on par with the Western powers.

Japan had a reasonable approximation of a bourgeois revolution in the form of the Meiji Restoration, so feudalism was no longer a fundamental barrier to economic growth. Though the MacArthur Reforms, which essentially removed all feudal remnants except the Emperor, were the precondition for the more dramatic post-WWII growth. Plus of course Japan's new status as the main US ally, servant and co-predator in Asia after the Chinese Revolution.

What made considerable growth possible in the interwar period for Japan, while Europe was mired in crisis and America grew rapidly in the 1920s and then butted itself into a wall in 1929?

It's because as the result of WWI, which devastated the European colonial powers, Japan suddenly became the dominant power in a relatively untouched area for capitalist exploitation, namely East Asia. And in the '30s Japan conquered much of China and created the "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere."

And this Japanese expansion reached its natural limit when it meant warfare with Britain and America. So Japanese economic expansion led to Pearl Harbour and, in response, Hiroshima.

-M.H.-