Technology, Economic Backwardness and Industrialisation — the Case of Japan

Abstract

THE image of the Japanese as at once peculiar and ingenious lies at the heart of much nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentary and historiography. Relatively backward, isolated and village-based in the mid-nineteenth century, they were at the same time literate, organised and ambitious. The Japanese were lacking any interest in ‘metaphysical, psychological and ethical controversy of all kinds’, and were ‘inclined to be satisfied with a ready-made knowledge’, but ‘their genius leads them in the direction of accurate, detailed investigation’.¹

The Japanese are very ingenious in most handicraft trades, and excell the Chinese in several manufactures, particularly in the beauty, goodness, and variety of their silks, cottons and other stuffs, and in their Japan and porcelain wares. The women are subjected to a most wretched state of degradation. A husband may put his wives to a more or less severe death, if they give the least cause of jealousy.

The Christians’ Penny Magazine, 9 June 1832