Peter Davies in his paper outlines the major trends in the development of Japan's commercial shipping prior to World War I. The paper focusses in particular on the role played by the Japanese government, arguing that the promotion of the industry was undertaken primarily not for commercial, but...

Preface: Professor Masahiro Sato of the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, presented this paper at a special session of the joint LSE-SOAS seminar series 'Japanese Economy and Society in Comparative Historical Perspective, held on 14 March 1990 at STICERD. The seminar...

Professor Tetsuro Nakaoka, formerly of Osaka University, and now of the Faculty of Management, Osaka University of Economics, gave a seminar on Japanese industrial development at the Suntory-Toyota Centre during 1992. Although it was not possible to publish that paper as a STICERD discussion...

The market is a place where people behave quite relentlessly. If one person is selling a particular commodity at a higher price than others, no one will buy that commodity from him, however virtuous or merciful he is known to be. Of course, the actual world does not always work exactly in this...

Preface: Dr Gordon Daniels, Reader in History at the University of Sheffield, presented his paper on the Social History of Occupied Japan at a one-day workshop on the Teaching of Japanese Economic and Social History, hel at the Suntory-Toyota International Centre on 16 May 1990. We are grateful...

Japan and England tend to approach education in quite different ways and often for different ends. Japan tends to see the direct economic benefit that accrues from an educated population and therefore places a great deal of emphasis on schooling. Successive English governments have not been so...

When Japan embarked upon her forced march to build a modern nation in 1868 the resource upon which she was most able to rely was her labour force. This was of a considerable size, and certainly not of a poor quality. According to Ronald Dore, at least 40 per cent of Japanese males at that time...

In earlier times economists used to view the world in terms of dual economic models. For Marx the Asiatic mode of production(1) was the concept which was the counterpart of the Western feudalism from which the capitalist regime and bourgeois society emerged: Weber regarded the Confucian...

Shillony: Paper examines how Japan's imperial dynasty dependent on the male line of succession has lasted so long and analyses how it will overcome its present difficulties. An Advisory Panel was created to recommend future policy to the Koizumi cabinet but its report in 2005 was criticized. The...

Steeds: David Davies, a young member of a prominent Welsh commercial/industrial family, spent the period between October 1904 and January 1905 in Japan, Korea and North China. His diary of the journey presents interesting background on conditions in Japan during what were crucial months in the...