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This article reexamines the causes, effects, and duration of the Matsukata deflation of the early 1880s, one of the most severe contractions in modern Japanese history, together with the policies Minister of Finance Matsukata Masayoshi pursued. It also investigates the understudied relationship between Japan's deflationary crisis and the contemporaneous global depression. Contrary to the standard narrative, Matsukata eventually succeeded at financial stabilization not primarily through retrenchment and taxation but through export promotion and bond issuance. Meanwhile, oversupply and deflation in Japan's export markets put pressure on prices at home, intensifying a domestic deflation that was already underway when Matsukata became finance minister.

This article examines the largely unexplored topic of Japan's foreign trade in rice during the Meiji period. In the middle decades of that era, japonica-type rice became a major Japanese export, highly esteemed in Western countries. In the 1890s, however, Western markets for Japanese rice shrank as the price of the grain rose; meanwhile, crop failures in Japan, combined with the ready availability of cheaper, long-grain indica varieties from Southeast Asia, prompted huge imports of rice; and the steady increase in per capita consumption drove Japan to become a chronic net importer of the commodity after the turn of the century.