Despite being the first Asian economy to achieve modern economic growth, Japan has received relatively little attention in the Great Divergence debate. New estimates suggest that although the level of GDP per capita remained below the level of northwest Europe throughout the period 730-1874, Japan experienced positive trend growth before 1868, in contrast to the negative trend growth experienced in China and India, leading to a Little Divergence within Asia. However, growth in Japan remained slower than in northwest Europe so that Japan continued to fall behind until after the institutional reforms of the early Meiji period. The Great Divergence thus occurred as the most dynamic part of Asia fell behind the most dynamic part of Europe.JEL classification: N10, N30, N35, O10, O57

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This article examines long‐term labour productivity change in Japan from the early seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. We constructed sectoral labour force estimates based on the methodology presented in a previous study, who provided a sectoral GDP series covering the Tokugawa period. Our results show the industrial structure in the Tokugawa period remained relatively stable in comparison with the economy after the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, the estimates of sectoral labour productivity suggest expansion of the market economy in Tokugawa Japan influenced the development of industrialisation after the Meiji Restoration.

New estimates on the premodern economic growth of Japan, based on more concrete evidence, have been presented. We revise the estimates of Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the mid-eighth century to the mid-19th century and its population in the 12th century and describe the institutional transformations that correspond to the output changes. The revision of output and population results in updated estimates of per capita GDP for the medieval period and extension of the growth estimates in the early modern period to the annual series for 1651–1841. This study employs the techniques of quantitative inference and descriptive interpretation of the estimated performance. The findings show that: (a) Both the GDP and population significantly declined towards the 12th century, stagnated and experienced recovery from the 13th century onwards, and then continued to grow through the 17th century; (b) GDP growth accelerated in the 18th and 19th centuries; and (c) per capita GDP growth began to rise in the 13th century after a sharp decline from the 10th to 12th centuries. It continued to rise through the 16th century but declined again in the mid-17th century and finally rose again from the late 17th century onwards.

Response characteristics of human operators in manual pursuit tracking with auditory input are investigated. The human operator hears in his left ear a sound whose frequency varies in proportion to an external random signal. At the same time, he hears in his right ear another sound whose frequency varies in proportion to the angle of a control lever of a potentiometer. The operator controls the angle of the lever so that the frequencies, of the sounds in both ears remain as close as possible. The dynamics of the human operator is studied by assuming a "man-machine system" whose input is the external signal and whose output is the voltage of the potentiometer. A learning identification method proposed by one of the authors is used to calculate the weighting function of the man-machine system, which is displayed on a CRT screen in renal time. During the tracking task, the skin potential activity (SPA) is measured as an index of arousal of the operator.