Japan and Far Eastern Development

Abstract

T NTIL the end of the Pacific war, Japan alone in Asia had never LJbeen conquered by a foreign power. Through the period of the Shogunate her ability to resist penetration by industrially advanced powers had rested mainly upon her insular position, although the need for strategic industries to buttress Japanese military strength had already been recognized. Awareness of this need, together with the striving for caste of the merchant and trading classes, had given impetus to the drive toward emulation of the West. Finally, the Shogunate was superseded in the victory of powerful clans resolved to foster industry within the feudal structure. The Meiji Restoration, which they brought about in i868, pursued industrialization as an official policy. The exploitative role that Japan later assumed toward Asia was in turn made possible by her industrial development and was profitable because of her complementary position with respect to the primary-producer economies of the continent. Today Asia as a whole is impelled toward economic development, and Japan can either advance in its vanguard or fall into eclipse. At present, areas within the terms of reference of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) are classified as economically underdeveloped.' Although the ECAFE organization considers Japan also to be an underdeveloped area, she is more highly industrialized than any country in the ECAFE region. Particularly because of Japan's poverty in natural resources, the reality of complementary economies underlying Japan's former exploitative role in Asia remains an essential point of departure in the analysis of her future economic development. Since the war, American Aid imports have supported Japan at subsistence level, but her future commercial possibilities in the West are