Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 532, Cash Rules Everything Around Mejee. Last week we talked about the politics of Meiji Japan. Today, we're talking

social and economic change during the beginning

of Japan's modernization. And we're going to start with the economy because, in a sense,

that's the most important shift that happens during the period. After all, money makes the world

go around. But the thing is, the single biggest change to the economy, industrialization, actually took a good

long while to get going and didn't really begin in earnest until decades into the Meiji period.

Why? Well, there are a few reasons. To begin with, much of the early 1870s was consumed with all

of the administrative changes that had to happen first,

the abolition of the feudal domains, their integration into a new prefecture system,

the conversion of the economy from the old decentralized currencies to modern yen and a modern

central bank, and the abolition of the samurai class and the thorny issue of dealing with debts from the old

regime and from the new government itself, which had taken on substantial loans to finance the

Botion War.

...