Origins of Japanese Wealth and Power: Reconciling Confucianism and Capitalism, 1830-1885 (review)

This brief introduction to Japanese economic development during the nineteenth century summarizes post-Marxist research on Japan's early industrial growth published during the last several decades. John Sagers trains his sights on the domain of Satsuma (since 1871, part of Kagoshima Prefecture) and the economic thinkers it produced both before and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The author draws together much information on the subject, making ample use of secondary sources in Japanese and English. Sagers writes in a direct, confident voice, identifying few ambiguities or uncertainties about his topic. This readable book covers ground familiar to most specialists and contains few surprises, but it is a useful exploration of the development strategies pursued by nineteenth-century Satsuma and the early Meiji state.

Sagers argues that "previous experience with economic difficulties in the Tokugawa system prepared early Meiji leaders to understand and respond [to] the challenges Japan faced integrating into international markets. Ultimately, realism required them to accept capitalist principles of economic organization, but the Confucian notion that government officials had a duty to guide economic activity for higher moral ends remained strong" (p. 7). By the early nineteenth century, a few economic thinkers in Satsuma and certain other domains asserted that promoting commerce was the ruler's moral duty "to order the realm and save the people" (keisei saimin) and ad-vance the domainal "national interest" (kokueki) (p. 10). Sagers properly credits Ogyu¯ Sorai with developing a "historicist view" that "cut political economy away from the moral authority of the Tokugawa Confucian ortho-doxy," which by the 1820s meant that a domain's policies could "be judged not by their adherence to an abstract principle, but rather on their appro-priateness to actual conditions" (pp. 21–22).

Starting in 1827, Zusho Hirosato, a follower of the political economist Sato¯ Nobuhiro, carried out economic reforms in Satsuma based on monopoly enterprises; within 15 years the domain was one of Japan's wealthiest. Sagers believes that Zusho's Satsuma was "a proto-developmental state" (p. 53). When Shimazu Nariakira became daimyo in 1851, he pursued a prospect for Japan "preparing its economy and military to resist the Western powers" (p. 58) by instituting an early form of industrial policy. The author minces no words in praising the "astute" Nariakira as "clearly a leader of great vision" (p. 71).

In reviewing the impact of Satsuma-bred leaders such as O¯kubo Toshimichi, Matsukata Masayoshi, and Maeda Masana on the new Meiji economy, Sagers points out that "liberalizing reforms were advocated not on the basis of individual gain, but rather on their contributions to national power and prestige" (p. 93) as well as to preserving Japan's independence. He is careful to acknowledge that Fukuzawa Yukichi and other utilitarians emphasized private enterprise for economic growth and that most bureaucratic proponents of state-led development supported private business. (One might add that the utilitarians stressed personal advancement, or risshin shusse.) Still, the author concludes, "many leaders continued to believe that the educated elite had a moral obligation to protect and guide the people" (p. 105), a conviction he traces to Confucianism, although such a tutelary approach might equally stem from a simple elitist sense of noblesse oblige. Starting with the Matsukata deflation of the early 1880s, the government's main role shifted to assisting private entrepreneurs in pursuit of national autonomy, power, and wealth, yet the state remained far more devoted to the protectionist doctrines of Friedrich List than to the free-market principles of Adam Smith.

The chief contribution of this fast-paced account is to highlight the continuities in nationalist economic thinking from Satsuma in the 1820s to Tokyo in the 1880s. But Sagers may overstate the case when he asserts that "Japan's ability to adapt relatively quickly to the growing pressures of the international market was largely the product of the late Tokugawa period's ideological legacy" (p...