bly in part because the ruling group was interested in developing a powerful nation rather than a prosperous people, but a much more basic reason was the economic drag of an impoverished peasantry and the countercurrent created by a rapidly expanding population. Japan as a nation was growing rapidly in wealth, but as a result of increasing economic opportunities and improved health conditions and medical care, the population of Japan shot up from 30,000,000 in the middle of the nineteenth century to over 70,000,000 by 1940. Because of this phenomenal growth, the per capita gain in wealth remained relatively small.
Japanese peasants at the beginning of the Meiji period eked out a pitifully meagre existence by intensive cultivation of tiny plots of land. Better seed, scientific rotation of crops, and improved fertilizers brought some increase in crop yields in modern times, and careful planning and hard labor squeezed from the soil about as much food as it could yield, but there was no spectacular increase in the per capita production of the individual farmer. In the West, mechanization of farming had made the individual farmer a large producer, but this called for an abundance of land and a minimum of labor, while in Japan there was a minimum of land and an abundance of labor. As long as the ratio of farmers to acres went unchanged, the Japanese peasant of necessity remained poor.
A large and fast growing peasantry created a superabundance of labor for industry, and the expanding labor market was always amply fed from this source. New needs for labor could be met by fresh recruits from villages and farms. Consequently, the laboring