Talk:Economic history of Japan

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[edit] Population of Japan

This may be a minor point, but it seems somewhat dubious that Japan would have had 26 millions at the beginning of the 17th century, when it was about 28 millions by the middle of the 19th century. I have no idea how notable Ikegamo Eiko is considered, but his "Taming of the Samurai" estimates the population to 12 million (which might be seen as low-end), with Kyoto being the only city over 100.000 inhabitants before Tokugawa established his court in Edo. Snapdragonfly 18:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

There's an unhealthy load of purple prose, to which we should add inaccuracies.
in the 16th century, Japan had 26 million inhabitants against 16 million for France and 4.5 million for England
This line is inaccurate insofar as it takes a. 16th century England as a benchmark; 16th century England was still something of a backwater, b. gives inflated Japanese figures (as commented earlier), c. gives French figures inferior to what they were; the population was, during the century the civil war lasted, stagnating around 20 million people. The accompanying paragraph still affects my purple alarm (can monastic learning really be compared to universities; was Japan that urbanized, etc.), but I know little on the specific subject. Snapdragonfly 00:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)