Bookreview
By Anne Booth
The economic development of East Asia is hardly a neglected topic, but it is still the case that economists tend to concentrate on recent economic developments, and ignore, or underplay, the historical origins of what the World Bank has recently dubbed the East Asian "miracle economies". In much of the writing on Japan (to say nothing of South Korea, Taiwan or the ASEAN economies), there is a tendency to assume that modern economic growth began after 1945, and that before that time there is little to attract the attention of the serious economist. Certainly such views are less widely held in Japan than elsewhere in the region, not least because so much outstanding work has been done on the pre-1940 "origins" of the Japanese economic miracle by Japanese scholars. As Professor Howe points out in the preface of his book "The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy", Japanese economic scholarship makes little distinction between economics and economic history. Thus it is refreshing to welcome a book by a European scholar which sets out so lucidly why the Japanese economy managed to emerge after 1945 as the world's most influential trading economy.
Professor Howe is certainly well qualified to write such a book. He
began his academic career as a student of Chinese economic development, and it
was
research into the pre-war Chinese economy which drew him towards the
Japanese literature on technology. Much of this book is in fact about
technology transfer, and especially about how Japan, after the opening to
the outside world which occurred in the 1850s, was able to absorb so much,
so quickly, from the industrialized countries of Western Europe and North
America. The cotton textile industry is given special attention, as this was
the industry which developed most rapidly, first to cater for the domestic
market, and then for markets in other parts of Asia in the inter-war years.
But these achievements could only take place within a public policy
framework which was supportive of export-oriented indutrialization. Not just
exchange rate policy but also education and training policies were geared
towards the development of industries which supported the over-riding
national priority of technology "catch-up". Professor Howe devotes a chapter
to the state-led development of such strategic industries as ship-building,
aircraft, and electrical appliances in the early decades of this century. He
stresses in particular that leaders in both public and private sectors grasped the compre-
hensive nature of the technology acquisition process and thereby ensured that the
acquisition of equipment was accompanied by development of the full range of
skills and knowledge, and by the business systems needed to adapt and exploit
such equipment to the maximum effect. The western specialists brought with
them not only working experience of the new technologies but, increasingly,
the wider scientific and contextual knowledge needed for further Japanese
discrimination, adaptation, and innovation.
The last part of the book looks at the economic impact of Japanese imperial
expansion in Taiwan, Manchuria, and China in the early part of this century.
Professor Howe has much to say on the fascinating, and as yet grossly
under-researched, topic of Japanese commercial penetration of the Chinese
and Southeast Asian economies in the inter-war era. He rightly concludes by
pointing out that if modern economists has paid more attention to this phase
of Japanese economic development, there might have been less surprise at the
post-war success of Japanese exporters in other parts of world.
This is a book which any scholar with a serious interest in the
economic development of East Asia will want to own; it will repay repeated study.
The
publishers have done their author proud, with impeccable presentation of
text, figures, and photographs, including one plate showing the author's
great-uncle, a representative of the Eastman Kodak Company, attending a
business dinner in Japan before the First World War!
Christopher Howe, The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, London: Hurst and Company, 1996
Professor Anne Booth is attached to SOAS, University of London.