Power Revolution in the Industrialization of Japan

330 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Power Revolution in the Industrialization of Japan: 1885— 1940. By Ryoshin Minami. Tokyo and New York: Kinokuniya and Columbia University Press, 1987. Pp. xvi + 399; figures, tables, notes, appen­ dix, bibliography, index. $25.00. Ever since Lewis Mumford divided history into epochs character­ ized by their power sources, an examination of industrial develop­ ment through a history of power use has promised to yield important insights. Ryoshin Minami has taken that approach to the history of Japanese development, using statistical analysis and an economic perspective to examine the larger questions of industrialization. His central object is “to demonstrate the ways in which industrialization and power utilization mutually reinforce one another” (p. 171). His study is basically comparative, tracing the development of Japanese industry against the classical Western progression of waterwheels, steam engines, gasoline engines, and electrical power. After looking at the pattern of Japanese industry as a whole from 1885 to 194(1, he turns to a closer examination of technological change in six industries: silk reeling, spinning, weaving, lumbering, match making, ancl print­ ing. He finds that electrification had the biggest effect in mechanizing production. On the basis of his findings, Minami rejects that part of the Gerschenkron model of development that postulates that latedeveloping countries adopt the most modern and most labor-saving technologies; he believes this to be an inaccurate description of Japan’s experience. While individual industries skipped one or more stages of power utilization, Minami’s principal finding is the speed with which Japanese industry on the whole ran the gamut of mechanical power sources. The pattern of Japan’s technological development was similar to that of the West but compressed; no power source dominated industry for very long. However, he concurs with Gerschenkron that industrialization is more promising in pro­ portion to the backlog of technological innovation from which a country can borrow. The time lag between the invention of new technologies and their adoption by Japanese industry became shorter and shorter. Minami finds ample evidence for the validity of Rosovsky and Ohkawa’s theory of trend acceleration in Japanese development. A great part of the value of Minami’s study is to provide data to test these theories of development; the relationship of this work to that of such theorists could usefully be advanced from chapter 15 to the front of the book to help guide readers through the vast detail of the book’s statistical analysis. Minami contends that rapid progression through mechanical power sources left a mark on the structure of the manufacturing sector. The shorter age of steam power and its quicker displacement by electric power relative to the West supported the survival of TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 331 small-scale establishments and the dual structure of Japan’s modern economy. Had steam power dominated in Japan for as long as it did in the West, large firms would have eliminated the small, nonpowered firms that were unable to afford such capital-intensive engines. This interpretation may rely too much on a doubtful continuity between traditional and modern forms of production. Minami in­ forms us that in these small shops “production processes were mostly traditional and quite simple, and therefore they did not need much power” (p. 81). They were without power and without machinery, and in 1909, on the eve of widespread electrification, 52.2 percent of them employed between five and nine production workers (p. 69). These traditional workshops seem fundamentally different from the small industrial enterprises that today provide such crucial subcontracting to large companies in Japan’s famous dual economy. Technology aside, theJapanese economy quickly solidified into large concerns and small. One suspects that the two were never competitive and that Minami has a valuable insight when he suggests the importance of the complementarity of the two segments of the economy, one utilizing modern technology to produce for a foreign market and the other using traditional methods to produce for the domestic market. This is a well-researched book by a prominent economic historian who successfully draws on both Western and Japanese scholarship to consider the role of technology in economic development. There are few scholars who are so

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