Monetary Debates and the Gold Standard in a Modernizing Japan: Economic Thought of Japanese Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi’s Adoption of the Gold Standard in 1897

In 1897, the Meiji-period Japanese finance minister Matsukata Masayoshi pushed Japan to abandon the silver standard and adopt a gold-exchange standard, becoming the first Asian nation to do so after India in 1893. Despite a sustained period of gold appreciation, which benefitted Japanese exports and industry, why did Matsukata embrace gold monometallism? This paper focuses on Matsukata’s 1899 Report on the Adoption of the Gold Standard in Japan and situates his arguments within Tokugawa and classical economic thought. It then compares Matsukata with American economist Francis Amasa Walker’s bimetallist critique of gold-induced deflation and interwar Japanese finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo’s abandonment of the gold-exchange standard in 1931.