Chapter 4
Population Quality in an Era of Balanced Economic Growth, 1880-1920

During the first half century of industrialization following the Meiji Restoration, economic growth was balanced in the sense that levels and growth rates in wages and labor productivity were roughly equal in agriculture and other sectors employing traditional Japanese technology and in the new industries utilizing a combination of imported Western techniques and traditional Japanese methods. As a result, labor moved smoothly back and forth between the two sectors of the economy. Discontinuity introduced with Western machinery and production methods was largely mitigated by the continuity of labor recruitment practices inherited from the late Tokugawa period when by-employments flourished in many rural districts and young women went out for several years of dekasegi work; indeed, it was females who predominated in the labor forces of the new textile plants using British-style ring spinning devices and mules, just as women had predominated in dekasegi migration streams during the late Tokugawa period. But the nature of contracts and work conditions changed as the large impersonal factory with constant turnover and a nebulous connection to the households supplying short-term labor to it supplanted the smaller operations of the Tokugawa period. Employers in large concerns did not have the incentives to preserve the health of their workers. For this reason, as the locus of employment gradually shifted away from the family-managed enterprise, there was a slow but inexorable breakdown in

the market institutions that had favored an enhancement of population quality during the late Tokugawa period.

Moreover, there was a breakdown in the balkanized system of entitlements developed during the late Tokugawa period. In part, this occurred because of administrative changes as the fief governments and the villages under them were abolished or restructured and a system of prefectural, city (shi ), and rural county (gun ) governments—with town (machi ) and village (mura ) governments underneath county administration—was brought in to replace the feudal structure. Political decision making became more centralized, and the structure of balkanized insurance entitlements was significantly weakened in concept as well as in practice. Lacking a domestic model for how to reorganize entitlements, the central government shied away from demand for population quality policies, its innovations taking on a supply side bias favoring the importation of Western medical and public health technology. The breakdown in entitlements also resulted from the reshaping of landlord-tenant relations that had been a cornerstone of balkanized entitlements during the late Tokugawa period. Productivity gain in agriculture associated with a diffusion and refinement of best-practice Tokugawa technique diminished variance in harvest yields, thereby largely eliminating the dependence of tenants on landlords; and at the same time, to the degree that the return on agricultural investments fell relative to the return on investments in industry, innovating landlords began to lose interest in agricultural activities, thereby surrendering their roles as spearheads of improvement in rural Japan.

Three factors kept this breakdown in health-enhancing market and entitlement institutions from generating political and social unrest sufficient to force the government and large employers to drastically revamp their practices and establish a set of market- and entitlement-based substitutes for those that had previously served households and communities. The first factor was the legacy of the Tokugawa period and the implicit assumption that employers would naturally look after the health of their employees. It was widely believed in many circles that government coercion was likely to be unfairly enforced and might even be counterproductive. Governmental responsibility—insofar as it extended beyond its own employees—was best left to taking care of food crises and the like. And because of improvements in agricultural productivity, these crises were infrequent. The second factor was the nature of labor markets in the nascent large industrial sector, in particular, the high turnover and the predominance of female workers employed on

short-term contracts. Unlike a farm household that invested in its own family members with the expectation of securing years of productive service, or invested in its members because when they left the household for marriage a long-lasting bond might be established between the household losing the child and the household gaining the child, the owners and managers of large spinning and weaving companies lacked a clear imperative to actively protect the health of their employees. Moreover, the mills tended to recruit workers from the ranks of small-scale tenant households, the least healthy and physically robust segment of the rural population, which further discouraged active investment in worker health. Village entrepreneurs who operated small spinning filatures and risked losing a good reputation if a girl's health was ruined might have a strong incentive to develop aggressive health-enhancing practices. But for the large spinning and weaving companies, whose female workers moved in and out of the labor force, the situation was different. And since the girls themselves did not expect to stay with the industry for a sustained length of time, they lacked the drive to actively organize unions or other employee-based organizations aimed at voicing a demand for better conditions. The third factor was that most employment continued to be located within the world of household-managed enterprises like farms and small shops, although there was a clear drift away from this sector over time. To some extent the problem was restricted to a relatively small portion of the population during the early Meiji period. As long as those experiencing the dirt and noise of mill work, the inadequate ventilation, the related outbreaks of pneumonia and bronchitis, and the possibility of succumbing to the ravages of tuberculosis were almost invisible, society at large took scant interest.

In short, those factors that had sustained and encouraged an improvement in population quality during the late Tokugawa period now acted as an impediment to further improvements. As the breakdown in entitlements occurred, differentials between groups favored and not favored by the market tended to widen. Unfortunately, systematic evidence on this breakdown and divergence in population quality is at best fragmentary. Therefore, in sifting through the various strands of evidence I will range widely. My discussion begins with a description of balanced economic growth during the Meiji Restoration, turns to the technological bias in government policy, moves on to the issue of the health and physical well-being of female factory workers, and closes with an analysis of regional differentials in population quality. To fully understand the significance of the evidence assembled here, it is neces-

sary to compare the findings in this chapter with those in the next chapter, which deals with the interwar period when a new set of market and entitlement institutions began to emerge and take shape.

The Economics and Demography of Balanced Growth

During the period from the Meiji Restoration until World War I productivity in agriculture grew, as did productivity in the nonagricultural sector, and while growth in manufacturing outstripped growth in farming and fishing, differentials in growth were not large. At the time of the Meiji Restoration a common labor pool moved back and forth on a regular basis between farming and by-employment, including small-scale light industry, and the forces of supply and demand tended to equalize earnings and marginal labor productivity in the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors. Because differential labor productivity growth after the 1870s did not unduly favor the nonagricultural sector and because the vast majority of the newly created industrial jobs were in textiles and food processing, which made extensive use of short-term female labor that did not require long periods of training, employers had little incentive to offer premium wages to keep workers who by dint of job experience were especially skilled. As a result, marginal productivity of labor in agriculture set a wage floor for manufacturing and there was almost no divergence in earnings between manufacturing and agriculture.^[1]

One of the reasons growth was balanced was because productivity of farmworkers increased as population quality improved. Consider the figures in panel A of table 16. While the number of farm families remained virtually unchanged throughout the 1880-1920 period, the number of workers per farm family gradually declined, mainly because the number of female workers per farm household was dropping. For example, the ratio of female farm household workers to male farm household workers, always less than 1.00 throughout the period, declines somewhat over the four decades. Now one reason why farm households could increasingly afford to release workers for dekasegi employment in factories is apparent from the figures on workdays per worker and on labor productivity: both days worked and productivity per workday go up. As each worker became potentially more efficient, the household was better able to "lend" some of its members to industry without much sacrifice in output. With the steady improvement in

population quality and with the lengthening in number of years mandated under the compulsory education requirement, the physical and mental capacity of those who entered into agricultural pursuits was enhanced. Moreover, as can be seen from the figures on fertilizer and machinery inputs, the worker also benefited from more fixed (machinery) and variable (fertilizer) capital. In this context it is useful to keep in mind that increasing the application of fertilizer not only improves the inherent quality of the soil but also, by curtailing the amount of time devoted to weeding, reduces labor requirements (see Brandt 1993). Indeed as farm children, who often did the weeding, were withdrawn from regular work to attend school, presumably the demand for fertilizers increased. In short, the secular improvement in population quality commenced during the late Tokugawa period and continued into the Meiji period as traditional best-practice techniques (the so-called rono gijutsu , technology of veteran farmers) diffused throughout the country under the active promotion of the government. This diffusion raised per capita agricultural output, and in its wake per capita gross nutrition also improved. And the effect of these trends was to free up workers for manufacturing, thereby encouraging the continuance of a balanced growth process begun during the late Tokugawa period.

Hence under conditions of balanced growth the agricultural sector and the legacy of techniques built up in the more productive fiefs made a major contribution to economic growth both in terms of generating output growth and in terms of elastically freeing up labor for manufacturing activities. Some indicators of the quickening pace of growth in nonagricultural activities and of its implications for urbanization and income growth can be seen in panel B of table 16. Note that the proportion of the population living in the six big cities where industrial production tended to be concentrated—five of the six big cities were either in the Tokyo (formerly Edo) or Osaka region or lay along the Tokkaido where by-employments had most vigorously flourished during the late Tokugawa period—grows rapidly and the proportion in primary industry declines. With the shift out of agriculture into the manufacturing sector, which enjoyed labor productivity growth rates somewhat in excess of those experienced by agriculture, real income and consumption per capita grew slowly but steadily (see panel B of table 16). It is important to keep in mind that this growth in manufacturing production during the 1880-1920 era was mainly restricted to light industry and that in light industry female workers predominated. Consider the figures on percentage of hours in cotton spinning supplied

by females. As can be seen from panel B over 75 percent of the hours were supplied by females and this proportion actually grew during the period 1890-1900. Moreover, wages for the factory girls actually fell short of wages paid females in farming; being a seasonal activity, farming could not provide the regularity of work offered by many textile enterprises.^[2]

What about male workers for whom—as panel B of table 16 demonstrates—manufacturing wages usually exceeded agricultural wages, albeit not by a large margin? Why does the wage pattern vary between the sexes? The critical differences were the skill levels required and the nature of the labor contract. Male employment was largely concentrated in government-managed military arsenals, mines, and a few heavy industrial facilities (some of which were later sold off to the private sector) and in a relatively small number of privately operated heavy industrial concerns that manufactured ships and the like. During the Meiji period when labor capable of employing the techniques necessary for using Western machinery was in short supply, a typical pattern was for these factories to contract out work with labor bosses who brought in with them to the shop floor their crews of subordinate workers. The labor boss trained these subordinate workers and allocated wages to them from the overall payment negotiated between him (it was always a male) and the firm. In fact, the labor boss system was a carryover from the Tokugawa period and is one more example of balkanized entitlement insurance as the labor boss "took care" of the basic subsistence needs of his subordinates in good times or bad. Fearing that the labor bosses could and would use their oligopoly position to extract excessively high rents out of the enterprise, corporations attempted to establish direct control over their workers, replacing the free-floating labor boss with the co-opted labor boss or internally promoted foreman whose fate was more closely linked to the company. Increasingly, as heavy industry grew and established direct managerial control over the shop floor, special status within companies was accorded professional workers graduating from the higher educational system and co-opted labor bosses. These favored workers were called shain (literally company workers), and as an elite they earned high wages, wages the enterprises tied to seniority and age in order to reduce turnover. Corporate paternalism in Japan initially developed around this elite and was associated with wage payments that, in comparison with agriculture, were generous^[3]

The vast majority of male industrial workers, however, were not given shain status. Until the slowdown in growth of the nascent heavy

industrial sector, coupled with an expansion in the number of graduates from industrially oriented vocational schools during the 1920s, spelled the end of excess demand conditions for skilled labor, most highly trained blue-collar workers moved about with considerable frequency. Some moved with labor bosses and some moved on their own initiative. Consider, for instance, figures for the Shibaura and Ishikawajima engineering works in 1902 (Gordon 1985: 35):

Not only did blue-collar workers leave plants with frequency, employers often complained of poor work habits and lax work discipline among their ranks and as a result often resorted to firing these workers who were denied shain status and were known as koin , which implies hired worker/outsider status. For these workers wage levels were not especially generous, although the more skilled they were, the greater the premium. At the time the typical heavy industrial enterprise saw no incentive in offering a generous seniority-based wage package as a vehicle for eliciting loyalty and effort.

As it had during the late Tokugawa period, female dekasegi labor continued to be the backbone of the industrial labor force. In other words, despite the great advances being made in importing and adapting American and European technology in Japan, continuity in the labor market remained strong in the sense that high turnover and the short-term labor contract prevailed. What was new was the fact that large plants operating with central power sources like steam engines or with electricity began to supplant the small rural workshop of late Tokugawa. And what was new within the large confines of textile plants or in the depths of coal mines was the danger of industrial contamination and exposure to airborne infections that had not been prevalent in the small shops of the late Tokugawa period. In short, as the large enterprise employing the bulk of its workers on a short-term basis increased its share of the total labor force, the proportion of employers with an active incentive to protect the health and physical well-being of their workers declined. And at the same time the health of the industrial work environment deteriorated. Slowly but steadily the health-

enhancing nature of the Japanese market was breaking down. And this was taking place in an environment in which the government was reluctant to intervene for reasons to which we shall now turn.

Community and Government Policy

During the Tokugawa period, the strength of the market and the balkanization of entitlements under the dual administrative system of bakuhan rule kept the nominal bakufu government of Japan out of entitlement programs aimed at the mass of its populace. For this reason the new Meiji government was reluctant to pursue an activist entitlement policy. But as Japan opened herself up to trade and to contact with the West, it became apparent to the former samurai who, as the educated elite, assumed responsibility for guiding the country along the path to industrialization that foreign models could be profitably and efficiently studied and adapted in many areas outside of that involving industrial machinery. As a rational borrower Japan could pick and choose the countries it wanted to imitate depending on the type of institution involved: thus the Meiji government designed its new police system along French lines, its military along German lines, its higher academic system along German lines, and so forth. But two factors constrained the government in its eagerness to follow Western guidelines: financial and resource limitations and potential resistance to social engineering, namely, the extent to which Tokugawa institutions were so deeply rooted that new institutions were unlikely to be accepted, or accepted only at the expense of social unrest. Financial constraints and the Tokugawa legacy of balkanized entitlements and reliance on the market must be given pride of place in attempting to explain why the Japanese government exhibited a strong "supply side" technological bias in its health/population quality maintenance and enhancement programs, eschewing social engineering in the entitlement field in favor of importing Western medical and public health methods and knowledge.

Not surprisingly, the technological bias was already evident during the later Tokugawa period and especially at the close of the Tokugawa era—known as the bakumatsu period—when Western ideas and goods starting streaming into Japan as isolationism collapsed under American pressure in the early 1950s. Dutch treatises concerning anatomy and surgical and other medical treatments had made their way into Japan through the small Dutch population residing on Dejima in Nagasaki harbor, Tokugawa Japan's sole window onto the West.^[4] For instance, in

1774 Gempaku Sugita published Kaitai Shinsho , which describes Western concepts of anatomy. While the bakufu sponsored a special academy for the study of Chinese medicine (kanpo ), over fifty individual fiefs set up schools to teach medicine, in some of which Dutch methods—so-called rangaku —were espoused (Sugaya 1976: 51 ff.). This espousal of Western methods, however, was opposed by the kanpo doctors, who managed to get the bakufu to require that all books be reviewed by the Igakuin (Academy of Medicine) before publication. Thus, while it is not untrue that the mainstream Tokugawa tradition of medicine inherited by the Meiji government was that distilled from Chinese medical theory, Western ideas had some currency during the bakumatsu period, when the bakuhan system was steadily collapsing. Indeed H. Hirota (1957) estimates that at the inception of the Meiji period around 19 percent of the doctors practiced Western medicine. In short, it was far easier for the central authorities to swing the country toward Western technical concepts of public health and medicine than toward a restructuring of the system of entitlements, which, even more than medical theory, was tied up with deeply held cultural traditions. But even in the area of medicine a strong opposition campaign was mounted by the defenders of Tokugawa traditional practice.

The new Meiji government took up the challenge laid down by the kanpo school and carried through the struggle by decisively tilting in favor of the Western school. But the issue was not quickly settled. The Meiji oligarchs proceeded on a variety of fronts, at first placing the Inuka (Medical Affairs Section) under the control of the Ministry of Education, but later renaming it the Eisikyoku (Sanitary Bureau) and placing it under the Ministry of Interior. To this agency was delegated the authority and responsibility for issuing guidelines on the standards expected of medical and public health personnel, the formulation of regulations for dealing with epidemics (with the opening up of the country to international trade after the mid-1850s epidemics became a problem), and the control over and testing of drugs. After systematic comparison between the efficacy of Western and Chinese medical practices, the Inuka bureaucrats decreed that Western concepts were to be given preference in the examination tests required of those seeking certification as doctors and in the licensing of schools offering programs in medicine (see Sugaya 1976:45 ff.). However, since most doctors already practicing during the early Meiji period used Chinese methods, kanpo practices continued to dominate throughout the late nineteenth century, a fact that increasingly ran counter to the posture of the government.

Within the government a growing belief in the efficacy of Western medical practices—especially German practices, on which Dutch rangaku medical theory was based—led the government to not only tilt in favor of Western medical concepts in examining and training doctors but also to enthusiastically embrace the new field of bacteriology. For example, the bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato, who was the first to isolate the tetanus bacillus, was sent at government expense to work with Robert Koch in Germany.

In short, the Meiji government actively exploited Western imports in the area of technological improvements—what I call supply side improvements as opposed to demand side factors such as the organization of national entitlement programs like those developed in Germany under Bismarck—to enhance population quality. In particular, through its power to impose regulations the central authorities actively pursued a policy of raising standards for medical and public health personnel. Doctors were required to register with the government, and it was decreed that examinations for certification of doctors were to follow nationally imposed guidelines (although a fully standardized national test was not introduced until after World War II). In 1899 midwives were brought under regulation and in 1915 regulations for nursing were promulgated. One of the consequences of this policy of standardizing around Western medical principles was a temporary reduction in doctors per person. The kanpo doctors aged and eventually either died in active service or retired. Due to inevitable delays in the establishment and staffing of educational and medical institutions designed to train young personnel in Western methods, replacements to the ranks of the medical profession were outpaced by the older generations of kanpo doctors. This explains why, as we see in the lefthand column of table 9, the number of doctors per capita decline between the decade 1911-1920 and the decade 1921-1930, before increasing thereafter. Even in the area of medical personnel the legacy of the Tokugawa period lingered far into the Meiji period. And because of the tradition of balkanization of entitlements central to Tokugawa government policy, gradually gathering momentum toward centralization was slowed.

But the long-run trend definitely favored centralization, and one of the most important agents of that change was the military. A case in point is the military's innovations in preventing the spread of disease in military camps due to waterborne microorganisms. During the Sino-Japanese War in the 1890s, the number of Japanese soldiers dying from infections far exceeded the number dying from war-related wounds.

Because of this the Japanese military authorities began a systematic study of why epidemics broke out in military encampments: they dispatched a research team abroad to study methods of preventing infection in foreign military organizations, finally settling on American practices, which they then methodically implemented. Henceforth they equipped all base and field hospitals with bacteriological laboratories; they made certain that every division included a sanitary detachment that carried water-testing kits; they made compulsory the boiling of water; and so forth. Thus during the Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the twentieth century, the ratio of those dying from infection to those dying from wounds dropped to one to four. And of course, since military service was compulsory—although exemptions to military service were granted—the military innovations diffused down to the village level both through government regulation and through word of mouth.

In contrast to its assertive role in promoting the importation and dissemination of German medical and public health knowledge, the Japanese government showed remarkably little interest in adopting German innovations in the field of entitlements, for example, health and disability insurance, legislation regulating contamination in factories, and so forth.^[5] The reason has already been stated: the legacy of the Tokugawa period carried with it an assumption that voluntary agreements between employer and employee lay at the center of health enhancement and that insofar as governments felt compelled to intervene, responsibility was to be exercised at the local community level. A telling illustration of this point is the protracted length of time required for passage and implementation of national mining and factory acts setting minimum safety standards, restricting the amount of overtime work, and outlawing child labor: over a half century of debate and study went into this effort. The lethargic speed at which legislation was adopted could hardly be said to be due to lack of knowledge of Western practice: during the early Meiji period the government had passed legislation assuming responsibility for the factories it directly managed. For instance, it hired French doctors in the Ikuno branch of the Government Mining Bureau to look after the health of the French technicians and miners who worked in the pits. By the 1910s mining injuries were in excess of 150,000 a year, many stemming from accidental explosions of inflammable gases, and yet stiff regulations were limited to government-managed operations. Moreover, the central bureaucracy had actually tried to draft and get Diet passage for a mining law as early as

the 1880s. Finally in 1905 a mining law passed the Diet. And even more time was required to pass a factory act: even when the Kogyoho (Factory Act) finally reached the floor of the Diet in 1910, resistance to the legislation remained widespread among the ranks of organized business who argued the "beautiful Japanese traditions" governing the relationship between employer and employee should not be subject to government intervention and regulation. And the law that was finally passed in 1911—whose twenty-five articles included banning employment of minors; stipulating that a certain number of minutes should be set aside each workday for rest; requiring that factory owners compensate employees disabled by dint of their duties in the factory; and appointing a small number of factory inspectors to investigate conditions in factories above a minimum size—was not actually implemented until 1916, almost fifty years after the Meiji Restoration.

Given the central government's bias toward supply side—technological—solutions to health enhancement and away from demand side—entitlement—approaches, the responsibility for organizing and financing public health and medical activities and for policing factories largely fell to local authorities. For this reason we should not be surprised that there is a fairly close relationship between per capita income and size and density of communities—the larger a community, the greater the economies of scale in the provision of clean water, removal of sewage, and the dispensing of medical knowledge—and per capita levels of investment in public health and medicine. In regard to this point see table 17, which gives figures for the forty-seven prefectures of Japan classified by levels of urbanization and per capita levels of medical personnel, hospitals, and hospital capacity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.^[6] There are certainly exceptions—see the figures on maximum levels for group D—but in general the greater the level of urbanization, the greater the per capita resources devoted to enhancing health. Balkanization of health-enhancing entitlements was continuing. Now, however, the force of per capita income and the tax base and scale economies were dictating the geographic pattern, not the dual administrative bakuhan system. And that local areas, not the central authority, were carrying the main fiscal burden for these programs helps us to make sense of the very low levels of national government expenditure on social security (including public health and medicine) evident in table 16.^[7] In short, many aspects of the Tokugawa heritage in entitlements were, under a new guise, being perpetuated in the Meiji period, even four decades after the bakuhan system lay in ruins.

Enterprise and the Female Factory Worker

How bad were conditions in the textile factories? To what extent do the anthropometric measures allow us to draw conclusions about the supply pool from which the girls were drawn and about conditions in the factories themselves? Many studies, for example, E. P. Tsurumi's (1990), have documented the fact that the mills were dirty, noisy, and poorly ventilated. But how much of a toll did these conditions exact on the girls who entered the mills?

We have some evidence on both points. As a result of the passage of the Factory Act of 1911 factory inspectors began to enter the larger mills in 1916 and to file reports on an annual basis thereafter.^[8] From the tables compiled from these reports it is clear enough that mortality rates among workers and former workers in the factories exceeded those for persons of comparable age in the prefectures in which the factories were located. Moreover, rates of airborne infection were especially high in the factory mills, particularly for workers who resided in factory dormitories and were thus exposed both at work and at their place of residence.

Anthropometric data for spinning mill recruits and spinning mill workers of various lengths of job tenure allow us to supplement the qualitative impressionistic accounts penned by factory workers and social critics. The data appear in table 18. On the basis of these figures we can make the following points. First, factory recruits were considerably shorter than students at all ages; second, factory recruits seem to have matured at later ages than did students (the gap in height between recruits and students decreases between ages 15 and 20); third, in comparison to students, recruits are heavier at any given height (i.e., recruits have larger body mass indexes than do students). Therefore, there is no doubt that there were rather large differences in the population quality of the supply pool from which the spinning mills drew and that of the female student population who were, in general, daughters of middle-class and well-to-do families.

But what about operatives who had worked in the mills a year or two? What was the extent of the impact of the work and living environment of the mills? As we can see from panel B of table 18, the pattern is a bit erratic, but in general the argument that more years of work in the mill adversely affected physique is not confirmed by these data. It is possible that there is a selectivity problem. That is, it is possible that the less healthy and sickly voluntarily or involuntarily left the mills early on in their work careers. But if we compare recruits with those

having mill experience, the superiority of the latter is evident. This does not really prove the argument of the mill owners that the "beautiful Japanese relations" between employer and employee were promoting enhanced health. After all, the mills drew from some of the lowest income groups in the country and it is quite possible that the food provided to the factory girls in company cafeterias, which was designed to keep up the stamina of the workers, was superior to that eaten in poor agricultural households. But the data do not contradict the argument of the mill owners, either. Perhaps the most reasonable way to put the matter is this: by the early twentieth century socioeconomic differentials in population quality were becoming very large. This was in part due to widening income differentials as the incomes in the industrial conurbations like Tokyo and Osaka increased and those in rural areas increasingly lagged behind; the process whereby differentials widened was not rapid as economic growth was balanced, but it was steadily occurring nevertheless. But more important were the debilitating effects of physical work and disease. The female students were not accustomed to doing physical work on a regular basis, and they came from households that could afford to spend more time and resources on coping with infectious disease. In short, net nutrition was far better among the young adult student population of Japan than it was among the young adult factory worker population. And the fact that central government was relying heavily on the market and was not aggressively promoting entitlement programs to supplement market outcomes was contributing to the widening of the differential.

Regional Distribution of Young Male Height

Without doubt, then, socioeconomic differentials were pronounced toward the close of the era of balanced economic growth. But what about geographic differentials? In light of the fact that Tokugawa period entitlements were balkanized and that socioeconomic differentials appear to be quite pronounced, would we not expect these to be substantial as well? After all, the combination of income per capita and socioeconomic differentials, coupled with the fact that some fiefs had devoted more resources to ensuring their peasants against food crises than other fiefs (which presumably left its mark on the physical growth of children at the beginning of the Meiji period), should generate regional variations in height and weight among young adults during the period of balanced growth.^[9]

We can begin the investigation with regional figures on the percentage of twenty-year-old males examined in military recruitment physicals who are short (defined as 4 shaku or less [1 shaku = 30.3 cm]). As can be seen from map 1, the forty-six prefectures of Japan (excluding prefecture 47, Okinawa) fall into ten regions. And for these ten regions we have data for 1918 on the percentage of males examined for military recruitment examinations who are short. The percentages are given on map 2. There is considerable regional variability in shortness. It is least evident in Hokkaido—where the Ainu population, which once was genetically distinct, resides and has intermarried with the population originating from the remainder of Japan—and in the Kinki region, which includes Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo prefectures, which during the Tokugawa period constituted the most economically advanced area of Japan. The regions where shortness is most pronounced are the districts in the northeast of Honshu, the main island, and especially the districts just north of Tokyo. To what extent these differentials are long-standing is, of course, a matter of debate. That they may have been long-standing is suggested by the fact—for which some statistical evidence is offered in the next chapter—that the high income areas of interwar Japan tended to be those that had been heavily urbanized during the late preindustrial period.

Conclusions and Implications

In this chapter I have argued that despite the wrenching changes brought on by the introduction and adaptation of Western technology and institutions in Japan over the period 1880-1920, the structure of the labor market as measured by intersectoral differentials in labor productivity and in wages did not experience sudden and dramatic upheaval. Indeed, what is most striking about the labor market is how strong is the continuity running from the late Tokugawa period into the period around World War I. However, while the composition of employment in terms of gender and wage levels relative to agriculture does not exhibit dramatic change, the size of industrial enterprises employing workers does. As a result of an increase in the number of large firms employing workers, especially in mining and in textiles, there was a gradual breakdown in the health-enhancing institutions built into labor markets during the late Tokugawa period. As these institutions crumbled there was a growing potential for a widening of the gap in population quality between various socioeconomic groups within the population of Japan.

Map 1.
The Regions and Prefectures of Japan

Map 2.
Percentage of Males Examined for Military Service Who
Are Short (4 Shaku or Less) in Each Region of Japan, 1918

Moreover, the central government was not eager or able to step in and—through regulation and a program of centralized entitlements—redress the disparities in population quality that by the Meiji period were becoming increasingly apparent. The legacy of Tokugawa Japan played a decisive role in determining the course government intervention would take. Hence during the first half century of industrialization the central government concentrated its efforts on importing Western knowledge in the areas of public health and medicine and on setting standards for medical personnel, focusing its attention on supply side policies rather than on the demand side entitlement policies pioneered by Bismarckian Germany.

But the breakdown in the population quality-enhancing institutions of the market coupled with a legacy of balkanized entitlements that was becoming increasingly irrelevant for the new challenges of industrializing Japan was not to go unchallenged by the poorer and less economically favored groups in Japan. Moreover, after 1920 balanced economic growth disappeared. A surge in heavy industrial production occurred in the wake of World War I in part because embargoes of shipments to Japan among the belligerent countries acted as a nontariff barrier to imports of manufactured goods, thereby stimulating the rapid expansion of heavy industry. With the emergence of dualistic or unbalanced growth the potential for an even greater widening of socioeconomic and geographic differentials in population quality loomed increasingly large. The result was rebellion in the countryside and pressure for the creation of a new system of entitlement insurance to replace the defunct Tokugawa entitlement institutions. The story of emergent unbalanced growth and the attendant political struggle over entitlements is the subject of the next chapter.