AN ASIAN ROUTE TO CAPITALISM - RELIGIOUS ECONOMY AND THE ORIGINS OF SELF-TRANSFORMING GROWTH IN JAPAN

Modern capitalism is a self-transforming dynamic that proliferates mar ket niches, new products, and techniques. The industrial revolution co uld take place only in the context of preexisting agricultural capital ism; that, in turn, required a breakout from the obstacles constituted by agrarian-coercive societies. Organizational conditions necessary f or self-sustaining capitalist growth included markets not only for com modities but for all factors of production (land, labor; and capital), combined under control of entrepreneurs motivated by an economic ethi c of future-oriented calculation and investment. Weber was mistaken in holding that the capitalist breakthrough occurred only in Christian E urope. I propose a neo-Weberian model in which the initial breakout fr om agrarian-coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religi ous organizations, with monasteries acting as the first entrepreneurs. The model is illustrated by the case of Buddhism in late medieval Jap an. The lending sector of monastic capitalism spread into the surround ing economy through religious movements of mass proselytization which narrowed the gap between clergy and laity. Confiscation of Buddhist pr operty at the transition to the Tokugawa period transferred the capita list dynamic to the secular economy of an agricultural mass market, op ening the way for a distinctive Japanese path through the industrial r evolution.