Growth And Technical Change in Japan's Nonprimary Economy, 1930-1967

Abstract

The Japanese economy experienced extreme vicissitudes in a short span of four decades, from the nineteen thirties to the sixties. More than half a century of steady economic growth was terminated by Japan's entry into a full-scale war with China in 1937, which escalated into World War II four years later. Its culmination was sheer economic disaster. However, Japan's recovery from war dislocations and devastations was spectacular, and she sustained high rates of economic growth in the 1950s (8% per annum from 1951 to 1958), which even accelerated in the 1960s (10.5% per annum from 1958-1967). Thus, per capita GNP increased fivefold from 1946 to 1967.