Editing Content :: Admin Scraper

Chapter

Content type

Position

Value

160 THEMES INWORLDH ISTORY Modernising the Economy Another important part of the Meiji reforms was the modernising of the economy. Funds were raised by levying an agricultural tax. Japan’s first railway line, between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama, was built in 1870-72. Textile machinery was imported from Europe, and foreign technicians were employed to train workers, as well as to teach in universities and schools, and Japanese students were sent abroad. In 1872, modern banking institutions were launched. Companies like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were helped through subsidies and tax benefits to become major shipbuilders so that Japanese trade was from now on carried in Japanese ships. Zaibatsu (large business organisations controlled by individual families) dominated the economy till after the Second World War. The population, 35 million in 1872, increased to 55 million in 1920. To reduce population pressure the government actively encouraged migration, first to the northern island of Hokkaido, which had been a largely autonomous area where the indigenous people called the Ainu lived, and then to Hawaii and Brazil, as well as to the growing colonial empire of Japan. Within Japan there was a shift to towns as industry developed. By 1925, 21 per cent of the population lived in cities; by 1935, this figure had gone up to 32 per cent (22.5 million). Industrial Workers The number of people in manufacturing increased from 700,000 in 1870 to 4 million in 1913. Most of them worked in units employing Workers in a textile less than five people and using neither machinery nor electric power. factory. Over half of those employed in modern factories were women. And it was women who organised the first modernstrikein1886.After 1900, the number of men began to increase but only in the 1930s did male workers begin to outnumber women. The size of factories also began to increase. Factories employing more thanahundredworkers,just over 1,000 in 1909, jumped to over 2,000 by 1920 and 4,000 by the 1930s; yet even in 1940, there were over 550,000 workshops Reprint 2026-27