President Ulysses S. Grant and Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito: A study of their shared dialogue on finance and capital and its long-term influence on trade and business development
Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
The Meiji regime’s faced constant banking and financial crises throughout its duration, 1868 to 1912, including the absence of trust in the Meiji currency by the domestic population; a sever deficit in the currencies capacity to fund modernity and the resulting pressing desire to print more capital; matched in turn by the fear of rampant inflation and how this would undermine the very legitimacy of the new regime. The Meiji regime in coming to office and for its first decades faced the very same fiscal challenges that confronted President Ulysses S. Grant and his secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell upon Grant’s inauguration in March 1869. The pressed financial position of the regime led directly to domestic reforms such as the abolition of the domains in favor of the modern prefectures system. During the time of the Iwakura Embassy visit to the United States of America (1872) and Grant’s visit to Japan (1879) and the decades after the Meiji regimes most significant public policy battle would be to maintain domestic and international trust in their capacity to manage the nation’s finances, particularly as their drive to modernity required them to conduct deficit-financing to fund the new internal improvement and industrial assets (from rail to ports to agricultural infrastructure to rapid expansion of education) that would take decades to prove their full worth. Both the Meiji men and Grant knew that such an investment would secure the nation a more strategically secure and prosperous future, as it had for the American nation, but this in no way alleviated the domestic pressures the regime came under over the rising debt levels. As a result money, financial and capital was the subject of broad and deep dialogue between the President and the Emperor, including the men who governed in his name
Keywords
President Ulysses S. Grant, Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito, Japanese trade
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Date of Publication
2026
Publication Title
The 54th Congress of the Business History Society of Japan
Publisher
Business History Society of Japan (BHSJ)
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
88271
Copyright
free_to_read
Recommended Citation
Austin, I. P. (2026). President Ulysses S. Grant and Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito: A study of their shared dialogue on finance and capital and its long-term influence on trade and business development. In Proceedings of the 54th Congress of the Business History Society of Japan. https://www.econ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/BHSJ2018/pdf/E09Austin_Business%20History%20Society%20of%20Japan%20Conference%202018%20Paper%20Submission%20Ian%20Austin.pdf