What was Pre-Industrial Japan like?

From Civil War to Military Dictatorship to Reform

I'm fascinated by Japan, one of my favorite countries, especially due to my love for anime.

At graduate school, I met a Japanese student who was a senior associate/junior VP at a Japanese investment bank before he started his MBA, and we hit it off well. He was deeply fascinated by West Africa, and he wanted to know about African Kingdoms & Empires, so I told him about my tribe, the Ashanti Empire in modern day Ghana. In return he would tell me about Japanese history and Japanese industrialization.

I think it’s interesting to examine how other countries industrialized to draw distinctions between African countries and non-African countries. Two big observations I have observed are horrific failures in African agricultural productivity and failures in execution of African industrial policy. (In Nigeria there’s the failure of Nigerian government owned steel production, failure in government owned oil refineries, and failure in state owned ship building. What is saving Nigerian oil refining industry is not the state, but the business magnate, Alito Dangote. In Tanzania, there’s the mounting losses of the state owned airlines, state owned telecom, and state owned railway).

The chats with my friend helped me structure this article.

A picture of me in front of a Japanese shrine

Japan, the first non-European country to industrialize, prompts the question: how? Before we speak about Japan’s industrialization, let’s start talking about pre-Industrial Japan first.

Japanese history is really long so I’ll just start in the medieval 15th century.

In short, this article has three epochs:
1. The Chaotic Period: The Sengoku era
2. The Isolationist Military Dictatorship: The Tokugawa Shogunate era
3. The Reform period: After American intervention, was the Bakumatsu era. Reformers realized they needed to industrialize and end the Shogunate.

The Sengoku Era or “Warring States Era” (1467-1603)

The Chaotic Century of Japan

Japan experienced over a century of civil strife, started by the Onin War, which erupted from a succession dispute within the shogunate (military dictatorship). The conflict fragmented Japan as the daimyō (aka Feudal lords, think of them as tribal chiefs at best or mob bosses at worst),vied for power. The daimyō were corrupt and just wanted to one-up each other, and there was chronic backstabbing. The Emperor’s rule was a joke, he was a figurehead… even that’s calling it generous. Various clans such as the Hojo, Mori, and Oda engaged in incessant internal conflicts. There was a super popular anime about this period called Inuyasha.

This was also an era where Japanese pirates - the Wokou - disrupted trade for Chinese, European, and Korean maritime merchants. In short, Japan in the 16th century was very similar to modern day Somalia.

Ming Dynasty Chinese merchants provided firearms (“teppo”) to Japanese feudal lords in exchange for gold, further complicating the era’s dynamics.

Also, Portuguese discovered how to do deep sea navigation in the 1400s (something that Turks, Chinese, Persians, Arabs, and Somalis figured out to some extent, centuries, decades before, or concurrently with the Portuguese). They embarked on global voyages, eventually reaching Japan and China.

Portugal's emphasis on exploration and trade stemmed partly from the desire to circumvent costly tariffs imposed by the Ottoman Turks. With Ottoman Turkey controlling Constantinople/Istanbul in 1453, Europe lost its primary land route to Eastern spices, prompting Portugal to seek alternative trade routes.

Portugal the first global Empire

In 1545, the Portuguese arrived to Japan and saw that Chinese were making decent money selling guns to the Japanese. So Portugal started copying Chinese merchants, trading with Japanese, but also tried converting them Christianity. Some Japanese were interested in the teachings of Christ, but most weren’t. Portuguese Jesuits started smuggling Japanese as slaves and destroying Japanese shrines and temples. To the Japanese, they thought that the Portuguese plan was to convert the Japanese to Christianity, overthrow the government, and turn Japan into a Portuguese colony (Not a bad guess!). The Japanese weren’t stupid so they starting killing Christians and repressing the faith.

Subsequently, Spanish and Dutch traders also arrived, engaging in trade with Japan. European goods like fabrics, glass, clocks, tobacco, and guns were exchanged for silver and copper. Similar to Africa, where firearms were traded for slaves, Japan participated in this trade, though Japanese slaves were not as common due to their perceived unsuitability for labor in hot climates.

In essence, Chinese and European traders profited from fueling a medieval Japanese civil war, highlighting recurring themes of exploitation throughout history.

Also during this time, one of the Feudal Lords thought he could take over China. He had to crush Korea (then called Joseon or Chosen) first, so one of the Feudal Lords of Japan tried conquering Joseon Korea in the 1590s. It didn’t work. China helped Korea push the Japanese out.

By 1600, the Tokugawa Feudal clan won and took over the nation in a military dictatorship - the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868)

In 1603, Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa clan who acted as Shogun (military leader) who governed with the 150 Daimyo (feudal lords) and the Samurai class. The Daimyo collected taxes from the peasants in his han (a fiefdom) and gave them to the Shogun. There was an emperor but he was a figure head; the real power was by the Shogun. They had this strict social class where business people (craftsmen and merchants) were at the bottom.

Japan’s social hierarchy during the Tokugawa Shogunate

When you judge a pre-industrial economy’s economic output, industry doesn’t exist much, so you can judge a nation by population growth. If a population is growing rapidly, its because there’s enough mouths to feed, indicating agricultural productivity. In Japan, rapid population growth occurred from 1600 to 1720, driven by advancements in cropping techniques, the cultivation of new rice varieties, and the use of dried fish as fertilizer. However, from 1720 onwards, Japan experienced stagnant population growth for a century until the 1800s, marked by epidemics, famine, and similar challenges faced globally during that era. Tax collection was hard and life expectancy averaged at 35.

Rice served as the common currency for wages and taxes, while gold, silver, and copper were utilized for Japan’s limited foreign trade.

Japan’s population under the Tokugawa Shogunate

The Shogunate brought stability and peace for centuries and was deeply isolationist. It thought the war against Korea and China was a waste of time, and was distrusted the Europeans and Chinese since they provided firearms for the Sengoku era. It also thought Christianity was a subversive religion that would make Japan a slave of the Europeans. Christian Japanese received the death penalty.

All foreigners were banned except the Chinese and Dutch, who was given a trading post in Dejima. (The Dutch were seen as cool since they helped the Japanese crush the Portuguese & Spanish funded Christian Japanese rebels). Also Japan wasn’t totally isolationist, it invaded the Ryukyu islands (present day Okinawa) and made it a vassal state in 1609.

By the 1800s, some people saw the Shogunate’s isolationist policies as backwards. Some Japanese feared European intervention, particularly after observing Europeans flood Qing Era China with heroin opium and rip out Hong Kong. The fear was that Japan would come next.

Russian, French, and British all came to Japan telling them to open to trade, but Japan didn’t budge until the Americans came.

The Bakumatsu, when America sends gunboats to Japan

America comes to bring “freedom and democracy” find new markets to sell to

In 1853, America went west, past California, and went to Japan. Commodore Matthew Perry came in with steam powered gunships and basically told Japan “allow me to use your ports, buy American goods with no tariffs or I will attack you”.

America forced Japan up to a one sided free trade agreement. Japan would give full merchant access to Japanese ports without threats of attack and Americans didn’t have to pay fees to use Japanese ports. Japan also had to grant legal immunity to American merchants or politicians who did business in Japan. This was considered a national humiliation, as Westerners could commit crime with impunity in Japan. After America did this “unfair treaty”, other European powers(Netherlands, Russia, U.K., France, Switzerland) forced Japan to open up to trade.

Trade revealed two things. One, Japanese embraced global trade. Japanese silk and tea makers found large overseas markets to make money. Japanese Farmers started importing textiles from Britain. A new merchant class - the Yokohama merchants, emerged who linked Japanese businesses to foreign merchants. Two, Japanese realized how far behind they were to the West, technologically.

At this point, Japanese people realized that the Shogunate was weak. Japan had to reform and modernize or get eaten alive by the West.

Japan’s technology was backwards. Europe and America had steamships, Japan depended on wind.

The Tokugawa Shogunate realized it needed to modernize, so it tried to modernize, so it tried raising taxes and borrowing money to near bankruptcy trying to modernize…. And failing….

There was a disagreement between the conservative isolationists and the reformist imperialists, so the reformers convinced the powerless Emperor to reassert power to save the nation. The result was the Bakumatsu Era or Japanese Civil War in 1853. By 1868, the imperialists won, starting the Meiji Revolution. If you like to learn more about this period and the aftermath, a great show about this is Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X. The Emperor moved from Kyoto to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo.

Conclusion

From the mid-1400s to the mid-1800s, Japan transformed from pandemonium to isolation to a semi-vassal of the West. Instead of becoming a colony, Japan, just like Ethiopia, decided to be imperialist to avoid colonialism. However, Ethiopia remained a feudalistic monarchy that mainly sold coffee until it had a communist revolution (Similar to Russia but 50 years behind), while Japan reformed feudalism and kickstarted its industrialization process. In the future, we’ll discuss the actual industrialization phase of Japan during the Meiji era.

Among the non-European countries that avoided colonialism were Nepal, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, China, Iran, Bhutan, Japan, and Thailand. Out of all of these countries, Japan industrialized first.