Selective Technology Choice, Adaptations, and Industrial Development: Lessons From the Successful Development of the Textile Industries in Prewar Japan

It is widely recognized that Japan successfully imported advanced technologies from Europe in the prewar period, particularly in the modern cotton‐spinning and silk‐reeling industries. However, the traditional silk‐ and cotton‐weaving industries also flourished using imported technologies. This study explores key factors contributing to the successful development of the textile industries in prewar Japan by examining long‐term statistical evidence and synthesizing the accumulated insights from the existing studies. We found that while many of these industries initially failed to develop through the direct importation of modern capital‐intensive technologies, the unique and common feature of the successful industrial development in prewar Japan was the selective choice of appropriate foreign technologies, combined with the adaptations of these technologies to domestic factor endowments, including skilled and unskilled workers and capital. As a result, labor‐intensive industrialization preceded World War I, when the real wage rate began increasing sharply, and was later followed by capital‐intensive industrialization.