Canoodling: Tokugawa Industrial Revolution?

On a Tokugawa kick this week.

Tokugawa Industrial Revolution: almost certainly not, but let's think about it a moment.

By the late 1700s, Japan had many of the preconditions in place. They had technology roughly equivalent to contemporary Europe; access to coal and water power; an organized, hard-working population; a large internal market; and a financial system that could quickly accumulate large amounts of capital. They had craftsmen who could work wood and metal to <millimeter tolerances. They had machinery up to clockwork. They even had a nascent tool-and-die industry: instead of having tools made by blacksmiths, by the early 1800s there were towns devoted to producing only high-quality tools from good steel. And they already had factories for large-scale production of a range of goods, from rope walks to chandleries to sake breweries.

There were some problems, though.

Coal -- while they had plenty of coal, most of it was located in mountainous or remote regions with limited access by water. Chicken and egg problem: easy to get the coal out if you have railroads, but...

OTL, the first phase of the Meiji industrialization was accompanied by vigorous exploitation of coal deposits in Hokkaido. I'm not sure if that's an option under the bakufu. As noted in an earlier thread, they saw Hokkaido as a source of fish (for fertilizer), and the Matsumae domain was economically optimized for that.

Mind, there was /some/ accessible coal. OTL it was used for salt production.

Iron -- Japan was iron-poor. (It's one reason their steel was so good.) A Watt-style steam engine would be insanely expensive. There'd have to be some really compelling need for it.

Science -- Japan c. 1800 was kinda sorta not quite in the Scientific Revolution. They had the Observational Revolution, hands down -- lots of birdwatchers and botany textbooks -- and they /knew/ much of what Europe knew, but they hadn't quite caught on to the whole hypothesis - experiment - test - repeat thing. Also, they didn't quite have calculus yet. None of that is a prerequisite for starting an Industrial Revolution, but it helps grease the skids.

Markets -- OTL, the killer app for the first generation of Britain's IR was wool, feeding the long-established large export trade. 18th century Britain was making wool cloth for half of Europe, and had been for centuries. There's no equivalent to this in Japan. They had internal production of wool, silk, cotton and linen but none of these were remotely as big as Britain's wool industry. Tokugawa Japan had export industries, but they were of goods not easily adapted to industrial production (i.e., high-end porcelain).

There are other issues -- like the low, low cost of labor, which discouraged capital investment, and the mild hostility of the bakufu to any change would could disturb the social order -- but those will do for a start.

Perhaps something could started with waterwheels? They already knew about using waterwheels for a wide range of apps, including metalworking and saw mills. So, more and better waterwheels, pumping bellows for bronze foundries, stirring paper vats and maybe spinning silk into thread...

But I'm not sure where it goes from there.


Doug M.
 
Could somehow winning the Korean Wars and grabbing on to a chunk of Korea solve any problems? although it wouldn't be Tokugawa Japan at that point. I mean Japan just got a hell of a lot more resources and became harder to isolate. So the Japanese might just decide to fight the rest of the world rather than isolate themselves from it.
 
Science -- Japan c. 1800 was kinda sorta not quite in the Scientific Revolution. .... None of that is a prerequisite for starting an Industrial Revolution, but it helps grease the skids.
Here's where you're missing the boat - you need to both spend lots resources on engineering development to figure out about power sources and hookups, and factories, and have enough freedom in society to keep the RIAAs from quashing the Internets to save them from having to adapt. I think something inside you is telling you you missed it, but not where.

Tokugawa Industrial Revolution isn't completely ASB, but you need to find a way to have Tokugawa want to establish a British-competitive society instead of wanting to design the longest-lasting shackles. You need social openness, a multipolar government, at least some kind of freedom and at least elites voting.
 
On a Tokugawa kick this week.


Coal -- while they had plenty of coal, most of it was located in mountainous or remote regions with limited access by water. Chicken and egg problem: easy to get the coal out if you have railroads, but...

OTL, the first phase of the Meiji industrialization was accompanied by vigorous exploitation of coal deposits in Hokkaido. I'm not sure if that's an option under the bakufu. As noted in an earlier thread, they saw Hokkaido as a source of fish (for fertilizer), and the Matsumae domain was economically optimized for that.

Mind, there was /some/ accessible coal. OTL it was used for salt production.

Iron -- Japan was iron-poor. (It's one reason their steel was so good.) A Watt-style steam engine would be insanely expensive. There'd have to be some really compelling need for it.
Googling "iron Japan" I found a 1902 article in the NYTimes (sourced from the London Times) http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9905E2D7113DEE32A25754C0A96F9C946397D6CF talking about a new foundry in Japan - with 2 iron mines and 3 coal mines attached to the project all within 20 miles.

Now, hauling iron ore or coal 20 miles by e.g. ox-cart would be nasty and expensive, but it should be feasible to start the early stages of an industrial revolution.
 
Didn't it take the appearance of the steam ship to break Japan's isolation in OTL? Can we name any western technology could have awakened Japan in the 1700's?
 
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