CIGS Working Paper Series No. 24-012E

The State of Economic History in Japan

Yutaka Arimoto (Metrics Work Consultants Inc. and Hitotsubashi University(Visiting scholar))
Tomoko Hashino (Kobe University)
Masaki Nakabayashi (The University of Tokyo)
Tetsuji Okazaki (Meiji Gakuin University)
Osamu Saito (Hitotsubashi University)
Yoshihiro Sakane (Hiroshima Shudo University)
Kaoru Sugihara (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature)
June 20, 2024

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The State of Economic History in Japan

Yutaka Arimoto *, Tomoko Hashino **, Masaki Nakabayashi ***, Tetsuji Okazaki****,
Osamu Saito *****,Yoshihiro Sakane *****, and Kaoru Sugihara ******

Abstract
This paper surveys the changes in economic history research in Japan. In recent decades, theinternationalization of research has progressed and the influence of economics and econometrics has
increased, and related to these changes, more economic historians are working on new topics using
new approaches. Japan’s economic history research was internationalized prior to World War II, but
only in the sense that economic historians in Japan “imported” theoretical frameworks, concepts, andperspectives from the Western literature. In recent decades, the situation has changed. Economic
historians in Japan, equipped with analytical tools from economics and econometrics, have generated
new insights and “exported” them to the international academic community.

Metrics Work Consultants Inc. and Hitotsubashi University (Visiting scholar)
Kobe University***
The University of Tokyo**** Meiji Gakuin University***** Hitotsubashi University***** Hiroshima Shudo University****** Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
*

**

1

1. Introduction
Economic history research in Japan has a long history. The Socio-Economic History Society, Japan’slargest academic society for economic history with around 1,300 members, was founded in 1930. Thisis four years later than the foundation of the Economic History Society in the United Kingdom, and10 years earlier than the foundation of the Economic History Association in the United States(https://sehsjp.org/). Since its foundation, the Socio-Economic History Society of Japan has produced
numerous insights through many studies by economic historians. Because it is impossible to survey
all of these studies, we focus on the new trends in economic history research in Japan in recent decades.
Specifically, the internationalization of research has progressed and the influence of economics andeconometrics has increased, and related to these changes, more economic historians are working on
new topics using new approaches. In Section 2, we highlight the progress of internationalization byreviewing the publishing records in major economic history journals. Section 3 describes theincreasing influence of economics and econometrics. Section 4 surveys studies on new topics using
new approaches. Section 5 concludes.
2. Progress of internationalization
One of the major changes in economic history research in Japan in recent decades has been theemergence of internationally focused economic historians. In the 1980s, the major outlets for studies
by economic historians in Japan were Japanese economic history journals and books, whereas
submitting and publishing papers to international journals in English was quite exceptional. However,the situation has changed after that. This section reviews the process of the internationalization of
economic history research in Japan.
To visualize the progress of internationalization, we survey the publications of Japanese
economic historians in international journals from the 1980s to the 2010s. More specifically, we
surveyed all papers published in the three major economic history journals, Economic History Review(EHR), Explorations in Economic History (EEH), and Journal of Economic History (JEH), and listed
the Japanese authors (the authors who were affiliated with institutions in foreign countries at the timeof publication are excluded from the list) 1.
Figure 4-1 shows the trend in the number of papers published by Japanese scholars working inJapan (simply called “Japanese scholars” hereafter). There is a clear increasing trend, which
accelerated in the 2000s. In the 1980s, only five papers were published over the 10 years, that is, 0.5
papers per year. In the 1990s, the number of publications increased marginally to six. Then, in the
2000s, the number increased to 10, and finally to 18 in the 2010s. Given the number of economic
historians in Japan the number of publications in the 2010s is small, but the progress ofinternationalization in the past two decades is noteworthy. Figure 4-2 breaks down the data of Figure
1

The list of papers appears in the appendix.

2

4-1 into the three journals. We find that publications in EHR and EEH drive the increasing trend.
Table 4-1 shows the number of publications by institution. If the author of an article wasaffiliated with institution A, this counts as one publication for institution A. If an article was by two
Japanese authors who were affiliated with institutions A and B, this counts as one publication for both
institutions (hence, the total number in the table is larger than the total in Figure 4-1). Looking at thefirst column indicating the total number of publications from the 1980s to the 2010s, we find thatmajor universities in Japan and the Bank of Japan, which has a section for historical research at theInstitute for Money and Economic Studies, all have at least two publications. At the same time, it isnotable that scholars of the other 16 institutions also published papers in major journals. This implies
that the internationalization of economic history research involves numerous institutions. This trend
arguably reflects the internationalization of the work environment of economic historians in Japan.
That is, most economic historians are affiliated to economics departments of universities, and thecommunity of economists has undergone internationalization, where publishing papers in top
international journals is highly valued, and hence is essential to the academic career of a scholar. The
culture of the economist community has penetrated the economic historian community, who often
work in the same department.
Over time, changes in the number of publications by institution are also of interest. Prior to the
2000s, when the number of publications surged, Osaka and Kobe were the leading institutions,whereas the University of Tokyo had no recorded publications. However, in the 2000s and the 2010s,
the University of Tokyo drove the increase in publications. As noted, until the 1990s, most economic
historians in Japan did not have an interest in publishing their papers in international journals, and thismode of thinking was typical of the scholars at the University of Tokyo, who were prestigious in theacademic community in Japan.
Table 4-2 classifies the papers by subject area. In total, papers on Japan account for 56.4%(22/39) of all papers, and they drove the increasing trend in the number of publications. This is not
surprising because many Japanese scholars are not only interested in Japan’s history, but have various
advantages in conducting research on Japan, including language and access to materials. Looking
closely at the topics of the papers on Japanese economic history, while most papers until the 1990s
were on macro issues in a broad sense, such as economic growth and standard of living, those in the
2000s and 2010s addressed a broader range of issues, such as industrial organization, industrial
relations, regional economies, war economy, and natural disasters. Notably, most of these papers
exploit data at the micro level, which is consistent with the global trend in economic history research.
Papers on European and North American economic history soon followed those on Japanese
economic history. Economic historians in Japan have long been interested in the economic history of
the West, especially Europe, which preceded Japan in terms of economic and social development. In
this specialist area of Western studies, most of the papers had been published in Japanese-language3journals. Many, if not all, of those scholars who published their papers in international journals seemto have motivations that differ from those in the academic community in Japan. They address issues
such as the labor market for Japanese immigrants in the US and the Great Depression in the US.
Papers on Asia, excluding Japan, followed those on the West. It is notable that three of the five
papers focus on Korea in the period of colonization by Japan, and were all published in the period
before 2000 by one scholar. He was one of the few internationally minded economic historians in pre2000 Japan. However, since the turn of the century, the number of papers on global and comparative
economic history has increased; most of these are motivated, not surprisingly, by the Great Divergencedebate.
3. Increasing influence of economics and econometrics
In this section, we review the history of economic history research in Japan, which is characterized by
the increasing influence of economics and econometrics 2. Arimoto (2022) stresses the difference ineconomic history research between Japan and Western countries. He contends that economic history
research in Japan is more history oriented in that it emphasizes the description of “what happened andhow it happened.” In contrast, economic history research in Western countries seeks to explain “whyit happened,” emphasizing a strict identification of causality (Arimoto 2022, p. 24). In other words, heclaims that Japanese economic history research is mostly descriptive and differs from research inWestern countries that attempts to identify causality. This characteristic of early economic history
research in Japan reflects that it had not yet been influenced by the methods of economics andeconometrics, unlike economic history research in Western countries.
Indeed, most papers published in international economic history journals in recent years are
economics and/or econometrics oriented. For example, most of the papers published in the three major
journals in the field of economic history (JEH, EEH, and EHR) use the methods of economics andeconometrics, and could be published in journals in applied economics. The same is true for
Cliometrica and European Review of Economic History, which approach these three major journals interms of reputation and quality, as well as Australian Economic History Review (now Asia-Pacific
Economic History Review) and Scandinavian Economic History Review.
While many international journals in economic history are economics and/or econometrics
oriented, the influence of economics and econometrics started only recently among Japanese economic
historians. Yamamoto (2018) argues that the degree of “quantification” or influence of economics andeconometrics among Japanese economic historians is much lower than among international historians.
He demonstrates this by comparing the papers published in EHR and Shakai Keizai Shigaku(Socioeconomic History), one of Japan’s economic history journals. Quantification in Socioeconomic
History is much lower than in EHR, which is less “quantified” than JEH or EEH (Yamamoto 2018).
2

In this section, we depend on Hashino (2024 forthcoming) unless noted otherwise.

4

Whereas the proportion of papers using quantitative analysis in EHR was 46.9% in 2013–17, it was
only 4.4% in Socioeconomic History in 2013–18 (Yamamoto 2018, pp. 72–73). More recent issues ofSocioeconomic History show that the diversification of analytical methods has somewhat progressed,
but compared with the trends in European countries and the US, the influence of economics andeconometrics has been substantially smaller in Japan.
The origins of this characteristic of economic history research in Japan were examined by Saito(2016, 2017), Yamamoto (2018), and Nakamura et al. (2021), who provide detailed accounts of theemergence and development of economic history and socioeconomic history research in Japan.
Economic history research in Japan was traditionally located at the boundary between history andeconomics, and each economic historian started her/his research in either of the two disciplines andlearned the other discipline later in their career (Nakamura et al. 2021, p. 27). In addition, the economic
theories they relied on were primarily those of the German historical school and Marxian economics.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the influence of Marxian economics has rapidly faded, andJapanese economic history research has become detached from economic theories and more history
oriented. Meanwhile, some economic historians introduced comparative institutional analysis and theeconomics of organizations into their economic history research, which contributed to a revival of theinteraction between economics/econometrics and economic history (Nakamura et al. 2021, p. 34). As
a result, a stark change in economic history research has emerged, as described in sections 3 and 4,
although its influence is not substantial at present.
It should be noted that this recent change has an important prehistory. Saito (2016) points outthat a “quiet revolution of quantification” took place in economic history research in Japan in the late1960s. One noteworthy example of this quiet revolution was the demographic research by Akira
Hayami, who utilized village population registers compiled under the Tokugawa shogunate. He
applied demographic concepts, measures, and methods to those micro data (Saito 2016, p. 202).
Economic historians and economists, including Hayami, founded the Quantitative Economic History
Group (QEH Group) as a cross-university research organization. Economists working with historicalnational accounts at the Institute of Economic Research (IER) at Hitotsubashi University joined thegroup’s historians. Based on the recognition that economic development should be conceived as along-term historical phenomenon, the group members, both economists and historians, conducted
quantitative economic history research, while the IER finalized the work for the Long-Term Economic
Statistics (LTES) series in 1988. Since then, numerous economic historians, both in Japan and abroad,have benefited from the 14-volume LTES and its one-volume English-language publication (Ohkawa
et al. 1965–88, and Ohkawa and Shinohara 1979).
The activities of the QEH Group came to fruition with eight volumes of Japanese Economic
History (Umemura et al. eds., 1988–1990) (Saito 2016, p. 202). The recently published Iwanami Series
on the History of the Japanese Economy (six volumes), edited by Fukao et al. (2017), is a new series
5that incorporates updates since the publication of Japanese Economic History and emphasizes theapplication of economics and econometrics (Nakamura et al., 2021, pp. 40–41). Indeed, the authors of
the Iwanami Series on the History of the Japanese Economy include not only historians and economic
historians, but also economists, and it is an attempt to engage economic historians in dialogue witheconomists/econometricians, while valuing the tradition of careful empirical research based on
historical sources and materials.
As noted, the methods of economics and econometrics have been gradually diffusing within
Japanese economic history research. In such a situation, it is somewhat ironic that foreign researchersof Japanese economic history let us know that they are actively introducing such methodologies andbeginning a new image, arguably something like a new illusion of economic history of Japan. Japan
has been accumulating resources and data since the early stages of its economic development, andmuch of the quantitative data provided by government agencies are now accessible online. In otherwords, the “entry barrier is low” (Kumon 2020) for foreign researchers to undertake research on theeconomic history of Japan. As a result, there has been an increase in the number of foreign researchers
publishing papers on Japanese economic history in international journals. Of course, it is beneficial
that foreign researchers have become interested in the economic history of Japan. However, in somecases, those papers have shortcomings, partly because they do not incorporate knowledge of the extant
literature on Japanese economic history, which is mainly written in Japanese. This means that there isa critical need for interaction between economic historians in Japan and researchers abroad who areinterested in Japanese economic history.
4. New topics and new approaches
4-1 Estimates of gross domestic product and population
Although the Great Divergence debate on the 18th century has attracted considerable attention(Pomeranz, 2000), “little divergences” in Europe and Asia are also the subject of interest. These referto divergences in terms of per capita GDP between northwestern European economies in Europe andbetween Japan and China in Asia in the 18th century (Broadberry et al., 2018). Takashima (2017) andBassino et al. (2019) demonstrate that Japan’s productivity improvement accelerated, whereas China’s
stagnated in the 18th century so that Japan’s per capita GDP surpassed China’s for the first time in its
history in the 18th century and caught up with those of peripheral European economies such as
Portugal and Poland in the mid-19th century. Estimates of the per capita GDP of premodern Japan andpremodernChina

appear

in

the

2023

versionof

theMaddison

Project

database(https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/) and are based on Broadberry et al. (2018)
and Bassino et al. (2019). Estimates by Bassino et al. (2019) were revised and extended by
Nakabayashi et al. (2020), who revised GDP estimates, using the estimates of agricultural output by
Midorikawa (2019) for the year 1150, and revised per capita GDP for that year accordingly.
6

Nakabayashi et al. (2020) also extend GDP estimates using four estimate point years, 1600,
1721, 1804, and 1846 for early modern times from Bassino et al. (2019) to annual series from 1651 to1841. They use descriptive and anecdotal evidence to estimate nonfarm output in medieval times.
Estimates of GDP in modern times were updated by Fukao et al. (2015), on which the Maddison
Project’s database is reliant. Fukao et al. (2020) and Fukao and Paul (2021) further elaborate on thesources of productivity improvement in modern times.
One factor that improved productivity in medieval Japan was the transformation from extensive
farming to intensive farming that continuously pursued land and labor productivity improvement fromthe 14th to the 16th century (Nishitani, 2017). This transformation also implied a profound change inJapanese society. The very dense “Japanese” local communities, based on villages where the same
farming households cultivated the same plots of farmland, were first formed in the transition tointensive farming from the 14th century in economically developed regions and from the 16th century
in less developed regions (Oyama and Mieda, 2018).
Saito (2018) reestimated population for the year 1600 substantially upward from Hayami’s
estimate of 12 million (Hayami, 2010) to 17 million. For 1150, Nakabayashi et al. (2020) revised theestimate by Farris (2006, 2009) substantially downward based on the estimates of agricultural output
by Midorikawa (2019). In total, population growth in medieval times is thought to have been more
rapid after the disastrous ancient period than previously estimated. Such updates require us to fully
reexamine Japanese economic history, a process started by Fukao et al. (2017a,b,c, 2018a,b), alongwith other developments in studies on economic history of Japan.
4-2 Comparative historical institutional analyses on traditional Japanese society
The early modern Japanese state provided farming households with property rights over the plots offarmland that the household cultivated by means of detailed cadastral surveys (Nakabayashi, 2020,2021). The protection of the property rights of farmers inevitably encourage farmers to take greaterrisks because properties protected by the state would serve as safe collaterals when they were pledged
to borrow, and hence farmers could borrow more cheaply than otherwise. To prevent owner-farmers
from taking too many risks, the shogunate regulated the trade of farmland and financing by pledging
farmland (Mandai and Nakabayashi, 2018). The shogunate also encouraged single inheritance, andwhen consanguineous sons were considered incapable of running family businesses, adoption of moretalented persons. This regulation achieved a balance between growth and stability. The shogunate
collapsed in 1868, and as of 1873, when the deregulation of farmland sales and farmland-collateralloans was implemented, the tenanted land ratio was estimated to be just 27% of farmland (Furushima,
1958, p. 332). Nakabayashi et al. (2020) note that, on balance, early modern Japan experienced modest
growth in productivity and social stability.
Protection of smallholders’ property rights in early modern Japan enabled its civilians to accept
7

a high taxation rate, which is referred to as “state capacity” (Nakabayashi, 2012, Sng and Moriguchi,
2014, Koyama et al., 2018, Nakabayashi, 2021) compared with other merging powers such as China,
Turkey, and Spain. The higher state capacity, or higher taxation rate, delivered room for spending on
modernization, including of the military after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
The stability of owner-farming households enabled owner-farmers to carry on farming while
expanding nonfarm production using the family workforce in slack seasons. Thus, the division of labor
deepened within, not between, farming households in early modern Japan (Saito, 2009). After all,
Tokugawa Japan maintained a relatively equal society (Saito, 2015b). Stable governance under the
Tokugawa shogunate regime also reduced the frequency of famines and pandemics, which raised andsmoothed productivity growth over the long term (Saito, 2015a).
However, the preserved equity incurred costs. While the shogunate’s regulations on farmland
trades and inheritance succeeded in protecting the smallholder class, they hindered improvement inresource allocations (Kumon, forthcoming). After the Meiji Restoration, farmland sales and farmlandcollateral loans were fully deregulated.
The reforms resulted in an increase in the ratio of tenanted land to 45% around 1900 (Furushima,
1958, p. 332). Even with consolidation of landownership, farming methods barely changed. Former
smallholders continued to cultivate their former properties as tenant farmers. Thus, the goal of tenancy
contracts was something other than technological gain from a consolidation of acreage. Indeed,
Arimoto (2005) and Arimoto et al. (2010) demonstrate that risk-taking by landlords after the Meiji
Restoration was an equilibrium between landlords and tenant farmers. While the shogunate and lords
before the Meiji Restoration shared weather risk with farmers through a temporary reduction of landtax, the Meiji Government defied such risk-bearing. Landlordism took over the role of risk-bearing.
The greater responsibility of households for risk bearing in early modern times cast a longshadow. Nakabayashi (2019) argues that greater reliance on family security made a larger welfare stateless able to maintain economic growth. The experiences of patriarchal societies such as Japan andcontinental European nations thus reasonably explain their heavy welfare states.
5. Conclusion
In this chapter, we briefly surveyed the changes in economic history research in Japan. Japan’s
economic history research was internationalized prior to World War II, but only in the sense that
economic historians in Japan “imported” theoretical frameworks, concepts, and perspectives from theWestern literature. In recent decades, the situation has changed. Economic historians in Japan,
equipped with analytical tools from economics and econometrics, have generated new insights and“exported” them to the international academic community.
The material covered in this chapter is limited in that it basically focuses on economic history
research on Japan. One distinctive characteristic of this research field in Japan is the contribution of8

scholars on Western and Asian economic history; however, a review of such work is beyond the scopeof the present chapter.

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11

Saito, O.. (2017) “Quantitative Economic History: Reflections on the Modern Japanese
Historiography.” In Toward a Reinterpretation of Japanese Economic History: Quantitativeand Comparative Approaches (International Advanced Research Report 1103) edited by M.
Matao and M. Sawai.
Saito, O. (2018) “1600 nen no zenkoku jinko: 17 seiki jinko keizaishi saikouchiku no kokoromi(Japan’s population in 1600: an attempt to reconstruct the history of the population andeconomy in the seventeenth century),” Shakai Keizai Shigaku (Socio-Economic History), 84(1), 3–23 (in Japanese).
Sng, Tuan-Hwee and Chiaki Moriguchi (2014) “Asia’s little divergence: state capacity in China andJapan before 1850,” Journal of Economic Growth, 19, 439–470
Takashima, M. (2017) Keizai Seicho no Nihonshi (Economic Growth in the Japanese Past), Nagoya:
Nagoya University Press (in Japanese).
Yamamoto, C. 2018. “The Role of Economic History.” Japanese Educational History 61: 69–75.

Appendix: Publication of scholars in Japan in the major three economic history journals
in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
1980-1989
Akimoto, H. (1981) “Capital formation and economic growth in Mid-19th century Japan,”

Explorations in Economic History 18(1): 40-59.
Kimura, M. (1989), “Public finance in Korea under Japanese rule: Deficit in the colonialaccount and colonial taxation,” Explorations in Economic History 26(3): 285310
Murayama, Y. (1984) “Contractors, collusion, and competition: Japanese immigrant
railroad laborers in the Pacific Northwest, 1898-1911,” Explorations in Economic

History 21(3): 290-305
Yasuba, Y (1986) “Standard of living in Japan before industrialization: From what level
did Japan begin? A comment,” Journal of Economic History, March 1986, 46(1):217-24
Yonekawa, S. (1985) “Recent writing on Japanese economic and social history,” Economic

History Review 38(1): 107-23
1990-1999
Kimura, M. (1993) “Standards of living in colonial Korea: Did the masses become worse
off or better of under Japanese rule?” Journal of Economic History 53(3): 629-52.
Kimura, M. (1995) “The economics of Japanese imperialism in Korea, 1910-1939,”

Economic History Review 48(3): 555-74
12

Murayama.Y. (1991) “Information and emigrants: Interprefectural differences ofJapanese emigration to the Pacific Northwest, 1880-1915,” Journal of Economic

History, March 1991, 51(1): 125-47.
Nishimura, S. (1995) “The French provincial banks, the Banque de France, and Bill
Finance, 1890-1913,” Economic History Review 48(3): 536-54
Yasuba, Y. (1996) “Did Japan ever suffer from a shortage of natural resources before
World War II ?” Journal of Economic History 56(3): 543-60.
2000-2009
Fukao, K, D. Ma, and Y. Tangjun (2006) “International comparison in historicalperspective: Reconstructing the 1934-1936 benchmark purchasing power parity
for Japan, Korea, and Taiwan,” Explorations in Economic History 43(2): 280-308
Kanzaka, J. (2002) “Villein rents in thirteenth-century England: An analysis of thehundred rolls of 1279-1280,” Economic History Review 55(4): 593-618
Miwa, Y. and M. Ramseyer (2006) “Japanese industrial finance at the close of the 19th
century: Trade credit and financial intermediation,” Explorations in Economic

History 43(1): 94-118
Okazaki, T. (2005) “The role of the merchant coalition in pre-modern Japanese economic
development: An Historical institutional analysis,” Explorations in Economic

History 42(2): 184-201
Okazaki, T. (2006) “'Voice' and 'exit' in Japanese firms during the Second World War:
Sanpo revisited,” Economic History Review 59(2): 374-95
Okazaki, T. (2007) “Micro-aspects of monetary policy: Lender of last resort and selectionof banks in pre-war Japan,” Explorations in Economic History 44(4): 657-79
Okazaki, T., M. Sawada, and K. Yokoyama (2005) “Measuring the extent andimplications of director interlocking in the prewar Japanese banking industry,”

Journal of Economic History 65(4):1082-1115
Solomou, S. and M. Shimazaki (2007) “Japanese episodic long swings in economic
growth,” Explorations in Economic History 44(2): 224-41
Suzuki, A. (2009) “Measles and the spatio-temporal structure of Modern Japan,”

Economic History Review 62(4) :828-56.
Suzuki, M. (2002) “Selective immigration and ethnic economic achievement: JapaneseAmericans before World War II,” Explorations in Economic History 39(3): 25481.
2010-2019
Bassino, J., S. Broadberry, K. Fukao, B. Gupta, and M. Takashima, (2019) “Japan and13the Great Divergence, 730-1874,” Explorations in Economic History 72: 1-22
Hashino, T. and K. Otsuka, “Hand looms, power looms, and changing production
organizations: The case of the Kiryu weaving district in early twentieth-century
Japan,” Economic History Review 66(3): 785-804
Hunter, J. and K. Ogasawara (2019) “Price shocks in regional markets: Japan's Great
Kanto Earthquake of 1923,” Economic History Review. 72(4) :1335-62
Imaizumi, A., K. Ito, and T. Okazaki (2016), “Impact of natural disasters on industrial
agglomeration: The case of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923,” Explorations in

Economic History 60: 52-68
Kobayashi, A. (2019) “International bimetallism and silver absorption in Singapore,
1840-73,” Economic History Review 72(2) : 595-617.
Nakabayashi, M. (2018) “From the substance to the shadow: The role of the court inJapanese labour markets,” Economic History Review 71(1): 267-89.
Nakajima, K. and T. Okazaki (2018) “The expanding empire and spatial distribution of
economic activity: The case of Japan's colonization of Korea during the prewar
period,” Economic History Review 71(2): 593-616
Nakamura, Y. (2017), “The relationship between the real and financial economies in theSoviet Union: An analysis of government debts using newly available data,”

Explorations in Economic History. 66: 65-84.
Okazaki, T. (2011) “The Supplier network and aircraft production in wartime Japan,”

Economic History Review. 64(3) : 973-94
Okazaki, T., T. Okubo, and E. Strobl (2019) “Creative destruction of industries:
Yokohama City in the Great Kanto Earthquake, 1923,” Journal of Economic

History 79(1):1-31
Okazaki, T. and M. Sawada (2017) “Measuring the extent and implications of corporate
political connections in prewar Japan,” Explorations in Economic History 65: 1735
Onji, K. and J. Tang (2017) “Taxes and the choice of organizational form in latenineteenth century Japan,” Journal of Economic History 77(2): 440-72.
Saito, O. (2015) “Growth and inequality in the Great and Little Divergence debate: A
Japanese perspective,” Economic History Review 68(2): 399-419
Sasaki,Y.(2014)“Publishingnations:

Technology

acquisition

andlanguagestandardization for European ethnic groups,” Journal of Economic History,
December 2017, v. 77, iss. 4, pp. 1007-47
Shibamoto, M. and M. Shizume (2014) “Exchange rate adjustment, monetary policy andfiscal stimulus in Japan's escape from the Great Depression, Explorations in
14

Economic History 53: 1-18
Shizume, M. (2011) “Sustainability of public debt: Evidence from Japan before theSecond World War,” Economic History Review 64(4): 1113-43
Tangjun, Y., K. Fukao, and H. Wu (2010) “Comparative output and labor productivity in
manufacturing between China, Japan, Korea and the United States for ca. 1935:
A production-side PPP approach, Explorations in Economic History 47(3): 325-46
Watanabe, S. (2016) “Technology shocks and the Great Depression,” Journal of Economic

History 76(3): 909-33.

15

Figure 1 Number of publications of scholars in Japan in the major three
economic history journals
Number of publications
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Figure 2 Number of publications by journal
9

Number of publications

8

7

6

5

EHR
EEH

4

JEH

3

2

1

0

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Table 1 Number of publications by institution
Total

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Total

46

5

6

11

24

University of Tokyo

12

0

0

5

7

Hitotsubashi University

6

1

0

1

4

Osaka University

4

2

1

0

1

Kobe University

4

0

2

0

2

Bank of Japan

3

0

0

0

3

Keio University

2

0

0

1

1

Nomura Research Institute

1

1

0

0

0

Toyo Yuniversity

1

1

0

0

0

Hosei University

1

0

1

0

0

Kansai University

1

0

1

0

0

Osaka Gakuin University

1

0

1

0

0

Ministry of Finance

1

0

0

1

0

Nagoya City University

1

0

0

1

0

Nagoya Gakuin University

1

0

0

1

0

Soka University

1

0

0

1

0

National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies

1

0

0

0

1

Nihon University

1

0

0

0

1

Osaka Sangyo University

1

0

0

0

1

Saitama University

1

0

0

0

1

Tokyo Institute of Technology

1

0

0

0

1

Tokyo University of Science

1

0

0

0

1

Yokohama National University

1

0

0

0

1

Note: In case of a joint work written by multiple authors at different institutions in Japan, the number is double counted.

Table 2 Number of publications by object area
Total

Japan

Asia

Europe and North America

Global, comparative

Total

39

22

5

8

4

1980s

5

3

1

1

0

1990s

6

1

3

2

0

2000s

10

7

0

2

1

2010s

18

11

1

3

3