Spinning Tales About Japanese Cotton Spinning: Saxonhouse (1974) Then and Now

Abstract

This essay provides a perspective on the intellectual context of the late Gary Saxonhouse’s first scholarly publication, which appeared in the Journal of Economic History in 1974, a study of the Japanese cotton spinning industry in the Meiji Period. For the remainder of Saxonhouse’s illustrious career, “A Tale” served as scaffolding on which he built subsequent analyses and perspectives on Japan’s early industrialization. Understanding Saxonhouse’s intellectual inheritance enriches our understanding of this pioneering study and the making of an economic historian and, more broadly, a “Japan specialist” in the study of economic growth. The year 2014 marks the 40 anniversary of the publication of the late Gary R. Saxonhouse’s article, “A Tale of Japanese Technological Diffusion in the Meiji Period,” in that year’s first issue of The Journal of Economic History (hereafter “A Tale” and JEH). “A Tale” was not only Saxonhouse’s first article in the JEH but was also his first journal article in what became an illustrious career cut all-to-short in 2006. Yet as Saxonhouse noted early in “A Tale,” he had two other publications in the works: a chapter, “Country Girls and the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry,” forthcoming in his mentor Hugh Patrick’s edited volume, Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Consequences, and a third paper, in mimeo, “Productivity Change and Labor Absorption in Japanese Cotton Spinning, 1891-1935,” that would appear in The Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1975. Saxonhouse would not publish another article in the JEH until his and Gavin Wright’s “National Leadership and Competing Technological 48 Gary R. Saxonhouse, “A Tale of Japanese Technological Diffusion in the Meiji Period,” Journal of Economic History 34 (1974): 149-165. 49 We are most grateful to Arlene Saxonhouse and Hugh Patrick for providing us with biographical and other information on Gary Saxonhouse’s development as a Japan specialist. 50 Saxonhouse, “A Tale.” Saxonhouse’s second publication, “Economics of Postwar Fertility in Japan: Differentials and Trends: Comment,” Journal of Political Economy, would also appear in 1974 but in the second issue, whereas “Tale of Diffusion” appeared in JEH’s first issue of the year. The JPE piece was a four-page commentary on Masanori Hashimoto, “Economics of Postwar Fertility in Japan: Differentials and Trends.” 82, 2 (1974): S170-S194. Saxonhouse died of leukemia at the age of sixty-three November 30, 2006. A short biographical sketch of Saxonhouse can be found at http://um2017.org/faculty- history/faculty/gary-saxonhouse/memoir. 51 Saxonhouse, “A Tale,” fn. 4, p.150. In fact, Patrick’s edited volume did not appear until 1976, and the title of Saxonhouse’s contribution had changed to “Country Girls and Communication among Competitors in the Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry.” By this time his “mimeo” (a.k.a., a “working paper” that he circulated in mimeograph form) had already appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Economics—“Capital Accumulation, Labor Saving, and Labor Absorption Once More, Once More,” 89, 2 (1975): 322-330.