In the 19th century, the majority of the workers in Japan’s modern industries were mainly
- (a)Japanese men and children
- (b)Japanese women and Chinese men
- (c)women
- (d)Japanese and Chinese men
Correct — C, women. Japan's first modern industries after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 were the textile industries, silk reeling above all and then cotton spinning, and they were staffed overwhelmingly by young women recruited from the countryside. The clearest single illustration is the state-built Tomioka Silk Mill in Gunma, Japan's first modern silk-reeling factory, which began operating on 4 November 1872 with about 210 female workers; by January 1873 it employed 404, most of them daughters of former samurai families, and by that April the workforce had grown to 556. What made these industries modern was imported machinery and factory organisation; what made them work was female labour drawn in on short contracts, housed in dormitories and paid very little.
- (a)Japanese men and children — Men were a minority in the textile mills that dominated early Japanese industry, and although young workers were employed, the workforce is not described as men and children. Male labour concentrated instead in mining, shipbuilding and the later heavy industries.
- (b)Japanese women and Chinese men — The first half is right and the second is imported from a different country's history. Nineteenth-century Japan did not bring in Chinese labour for its modern factories; the migration story of Chinese contract workers belongs to Southeast Asia, the Americas and the plantation colonies.
- (d)Japanese and Chinese men — Wrong on both counts — it excludes women, who were the majority, and adds a Chinese workforce that was not there. It is the option a candidate reaches for by assuming that industrial labour anywhere means male labour.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the Tokugawa shogunate and began a state-led drive to industrialise Japan so that it could meet the Western powers on their own terms. The government built model factories, imported foreign machinery and foreign engineers, and then sold many of the enterprises on to private business houses. Textiles led the way because silk and cotton needed less capital than heavy industry and because raw silk was Japan's great export earner, paying for the machinery and expertise that everything else depended on.
The item rewards a student who remembers the shape of early industrialisation rather than a stereotype about who works in factories. Two of the four options insert Chinese men into the Japanese workforce, which is a good reminder to check whether an option has quietly changed the country. On the substance, the pattern is not unique to Japan — the same paper's question on the English industrial revolution records women as the main workers in silk, lace-making and knitting, so the two items reinforce each other. The Tomioka Silk Mill still stands and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 21 June 2014, two years before this paper was set, and it remains on the list today.
- The Meiji Restoration of 1868 launched Japan's state-directed industrialisation, beginning with textiles.
- The Tomioka Silk Mill in Gunma, Japan's first modern silk-reeling factory, opened on 4 November 1872 with about 210 women workers.
- Its workforce had reached 404 by January 1873, largely daughters of former samurai families, and 556 by April 1873.
- Tomioka Silk Mill and its related sites were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 21 June 2014.
- Assuming factory labour must mean male labour; in early textile industrialisation it usually did not.
- Accepting an option that silently adds workers of another nationality — two options here do exactly that.
- Extending the pattern to all industries; mining and shipbuilding in Japan were male-dominated.
The GAT draws its Japan questions from the NCERT chapter on paths to modernisation, and favours items on who did the work, what the state built and how the changes were financed.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Meiji Restoration in Japan took place in
- (a)1853
- (b)1868
- (c)1889
- (d)1905
Answer(b) 1868 — it ended the Tokugawa shogunate and began the state-led modernisation of Japan.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Tomioka Silk Mill, Japan's first modern silk-reeling factory, was
- (a)built by a private zaibatsu house in 1901
- (b)built by the government in 1872 and staffed largely by women
- (c)a cotton spinning mill set up by British investors
- (d)destroyed during the Meiji Restoration
Answer(b) built by the government in 1872 and staffed largely by women — it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.