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Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From What Level Did Japan Begin? A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Yasukichi Yasuba
Yasukichi Yasuba
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics at Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 650, Japan.
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Abstract

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Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 217 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

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2 Umemura, Mataji, “Bakumatsu no Keizai Hatten” [Economic development towards the end of the Tokugawa Period], Kenkyūkai, Kindai Nihon, ed., Bakumatsu-Ishin no Nihon (Tokyo, 1981).Google Scholar For a similar and even more forceful assertion, see Hanley, Susan B. and Yamamura, Kozo, Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868 (Princeton, 1977).Google Scholar

3 Hanley, Susan B., “A High Standard of Living in Nineteenth-Century Japan: Fact or Fantasy?” this Journal, 43 (03 1983), p. 183.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 188.Google Scholar

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17 Yasuba, Yasukichi, “Another Look at the Tokugawa Heritage with Special Reference to Social Conditions,” Ohkawa and Hayami, eds., Japan's Historical Development Experience, p. 4.Google Scholar In order to reconstitute the population, it was assumed that migration can be neglected, For the British life expectancy, see Wrigley, E. A., Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871 (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 230.Google Scholar

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26 The original Indian figure of $47 in 1965 prices was M. Mukherjee's. Quoted from Kuznets, Simon, Economic Growth of Nations: Total Output and Production Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 31. The ratio of GDP to NNP was assumed to be 1.06 as in 1960. Price changes and exchange rate changes between 1965 and 1970 were taken into account by the series in International Financial Statistics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, the 1970 figure was adjusted, using the converter given in Kravis, Heston, and Summers, “Real GDP,” p. 216.Google Scholar