Non-Agrarian Production and Capital Formation in Pre-Modern Japan

Eight sets of time-series (mainly production) statistics have been assembled, covering the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries in Japan. Many of the data indicate a clear increase during the l790s-1820s, followed by a period of either stable or slightly upward movements until the middle of the nineteenth century. Together with the now widely accepted knowledge that population was stagnant in the same period, the above observation is loosely consistent with a revisionist view that the standard of living in the early modern Japan moderately improved