SOCIOECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EMIGRATION IN THE EARLY STAGE OF MODERNIZATION: PATH ANALYSIS BASED ON THE VILLAGE DATA IN JAPAN

Abstract

International mobility of human beings is an important social phenomenon that demonstrates the degree of dynamism of a society. However, unlike many of European countries, Japanese emigrants to Hawaii, North America, South America and other Asian regions during the modernizing stage from the Meiji era to World War II were estimated as about one million at most; it might be said that the emigrants were exceptional as an illustration of labor force mobility. One characteristic fact of Japanese emigration is that home villages of emigrants are distributed very unevenly geographically. The paper deals with this geo- graphically skewed distribution of villages inducing emigrants, clarifying what conditions of socioeconomic factors affect the emigration at the village level in the early stage of Japanese modernization. For the analysis, the dimensionality test by component factor analysis and path analysis are introduced, based on the secondary data which was published by the government in 1880 (Meiji 13) and then. The analysis clarifies that no single factor but several factors simultaneously affect the emigration at the village level, constructing the complex structure formed by three basic components: natural environment, accessibility of external resources and. socioeconomic characteristics.