Kuznets identified the economic growth of nations as ‘a sustained increase in per capita or per worker product, mostly often accompanied by an increase in population and usually by sweeping structural changes’. Of course, ‘growthmania’ may neglect distribution, basic needs, social indicators, equality and strategies which are less oriented to maximising output growth. In Japan material progress was historically related to political and social costs, most strikingly in the case of militarism.

Table 1, overleaf illustrates the general growth picture and its fluctuations.

Japan was already relatively densely populated in 1868 but it is clear from Table 1 that population growth has been moderate, nearer to British rates during the Industrial Revolution than to the much higher rates in many LDCs since the Second World War. The upswings, downswings and trend acceleration in economic growth, already noted, are prominent. In the past decade or so rates of growth have been slower, raising the possibility that there is now a phase of trend deceleration. Japan started her modern economic growth at a much lower level of per capita income than did most other now developed countries. Even in 1974 the UN International Comparison Project found that GDP per capita was only 63 per cent of that in the USA and below that in most industrialised societies except the UK and Italy. But the gap has been steadily narrowing over time. Only the USA among 14 non-socialist countries had a historically faster rate of growth of total product and Sweden of per capita.