Fumio Makino

The Development of Appropriate Technologies for Export Promotion in the Silk-Reeling Industry

In the same way that the cotton industry led the Industrial Revolution in England,2 the silk industry played a critically important role in the industrialization of pre-war Japan which began in around 1885. There were three reasons for this: first, the silk industry, a typically agro-based, export-oriented industry, attracted a considerable sum of foreign currency until the early 1930s; exports of raw silk alone comprised 36 per cent of total exports in the 1870s and 1880s, seldom dipping below 25 per cent through to the early 1930s.3 The same was not true for the cotton-spinning and weaving industries which had to compete head-to-head with foreign imports. Second, whereas raw materials (cotton) and machines (spinning machines and large-size power looms) in the cotton industry were all imported from abroad, the silk industry was supplied with domestically raised cocoons, domestically manufactured reeling machines and other related instruments. This made it easier for the silk industry to attract more foreign currency than its cotton counterpart. Third, the silk-reeling industry, together with sericulture which supplied raw materials to it, gave additional employment and income opportunities to farmers during their agricultural off-season. The additional income was especially important for the farmers since they were located in the countryside far from the bustling industrial centres.

China’s Turning Point from an East Asian Perspective: Prospective Recapitulation

Part I of this volume evaluated the turning point experiences in China’s neighboring countries of Japan and South Korea. Another fast-growing country outside the East Asian region, Indonesia, was included for added comparison. We then analyzed China’s labor market conditions to determine whether or not China has reached the Lewisian turning point. Other Asian neighbors provided us with useful benchmarks in determining China’s turning point in the context of the dualistic Lewisian model, that is whether its unlimited surplus labor has approached its end. While Japan, Taiwan 1 and South Korea have already passed the Lewisian turning point in 1960, 1967 and 1973 respectively, from a comparative East Asian perspective, there are good reasons to doubt that China has passed the turning point.

Concluding Reflections: Lessons from the Japanese Experience

Technological progress, along with high levels of investment, has been an integral part of the process of economic development in Japan, and has contributed to economic growth. A broad implication drawn from the Japanese experience is that technical progress has played a decisive role in economic development. Efforts for technological development have ranged from simple acquisition of foreign technology to improvements in imported technology, and to the development of its own competitive technology. Without this cumulative process of acquisition, adaptation and development of new technologies, economic development in a country poor in resources like Japan could not have taken place.

Japanese Experience in Technology: A Survey

Japan commenced her ‘modern economic growth’ a la S. Kuznets in 1886, following an eighteen-year transition period in the wake of the Meiji Restoration in 1868.1 Japan in the pre-war period had relatively high economic growth rates: the annual growth rate of Gross National Product (GNP) in real terms for the period 1889–1938 was 3.2 per cent. With a rate of population growth of 1.1 per cent, per capitum GNP grew at 2.1 per cent.2 Pre-war growth in Japan compares favourably with the Western nations: for instance, during the period from 1900 to 1938, the average long-term rates of growth in GNP in the UK, Germany, the USA and Japan were 1.4 per cent, 2.9 per cent, 3.0 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively.3 This shows the success of Japan as a latecomer in industrialization.

Mechanism of the Diffusion of Technologies: Case Study of the Cotton-Weaving Industry

A rapid increase in the productivity of labour in the Japanese weaving industry as a whole (cotton, silk, worsted and hemp) for the period 1901–38 was chiefly attributable to technological progress.1 A major factor responsible for this technological progress was the transition from hand looms to power looms. The ratio of power looms in this industry increased steadily from about 2 per cent in 1907 to 37 per cent in 1920 and 85 per cent in 1938.2 The ratio in the cotton-weaving industry rose from 57 per cent to 91 per cent between 1922 and 1938.3 Technological progress also depended on improvements in both hand and power looms. Hand looms were improved by the application of a batten (flying shuttle) apparatus and power looms were improved first by a shift from wooden-iron narrow power looms to all-iron narrow power looms, then to broad power looms and finally to automatic looms.4