Abstract

Free competition in product markets is a common characteristic in capitalist economies. Meanwhile, regulations on the land, labour, and financial markets have changed over time in each capitalist economy and are distinct. We address this issue in the Japanese context. Medieval Japan under the second shogunate of Muromachi in the fourteenth century instituted a free competition regime for land, labour, and financial markets. An outcome was wealth inequality and social destabilization. The third shogunate of Edo vested peasants with property rights and regulated the land, labour, and financial market to maintain them as owner-farmers. The regime created an institutional arrangement where the stem farming family functioned as the centre of resource allocation. Deregulation after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 weakened the family-focused arrangement but did not entirely remove it. Traits of the family-focused arrangement form the specific characteristic of modern Japanese capitalism.

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