The three volumes of this collection (Tokugawa Economy and Society, Meiji Industrialization, and Twentieth Century Japan) feature essays examining the economic and social transformations that redefined Japan from the proto-industrial economy of the early moder era to Japan’s twentieth-century emergence as one of the world’s great industrialized nations.

The first volume, Tokugawa Economy and Society, examines how the political economy of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, despite political constraints designed specifically to hinder social and economic change, established the proto-industrial roots for Japan’s rapid industrialization during the Meiji Era.

The second volume, Meiji Industrialization, explores how the men who established the modern government of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) found fertile ground for the rapid industrialization they envisioned necessary for the defense of the nation. Their successes, and failures, laid the groundwork for a modern empire.

The final volume, Twentieth Century Japan, examines the century of industrialization that underpinned the rise of Imperial Japan, its disastrous invasion of Pacific Asia, and its unexpected emergence from the ashes of World War II to become one of the world’s great industrialized powers, a feat which has since fascinated politicians and industrialists across the developing and developed world.