I can't really help you with China, but can say a few things about Japan.

In 1707 japan would be in the middle of the Pax Tokugawa so it would be quite stable politically, with good infrastructure (roads, tax system, plumbing in Edo, etc). Famine was much rarer than it had been pre-Tokugawa due to government irrigation works, but there were several big famines throughout the Tokugawa period, with the closest to 1707 being the 1732 Kyoho famine. In terms of education, Tokugawa elites usually had private tutors or teachers; less wealthy students could attend terakoya, or temple schools. Education was usually male only. Literacy was quite high among commoners compared to equivalent nations in the West. Use of money rather than barter was common; the lack of social/political unrest meant a thriving merchant class had been able to develop. Physical health wasn't the best, cities were comparatively pretty clean due to the plumbing systems so there weren't many epidemics, but elites had very unhealthy diets and western medicine hadn't been imported yet (western medicine got it's start in 1771 when doctors started dissecting criminals bodies and comparing the anatomy to dutch engravings).

In 1907 Japan would be at the very end of the Meiji period, and pretty westernized. There was compulsory universal elementary school education for both boys and girls, use of money was common, doctors trained in western medicine were common in the cities, etc. Most wealth stayed in the cities though, so there was a pretty big gap between urban and rural quality of life, and poor farmers often had to sell their daughters to work in factories or brothels to make ends meet.

Hope that helps!

Here's 1 site that may help you. Click on the link "Maddison Project Database."

http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm

Angus Maddison was an economist who tried to understand the transformation of the global economy over the long term. So this project has tried to trace the GDP of many countries over time. Now the data is always up for revision and sometimes not completely accurate but this site is pretty much the best we've got right now for a starting discussion.

So according to the Maddison project:

China's per person GDP in 1707 is unavailable. The earliest estimate appears in 1820 and it's $600 (in 1990 $). It's still $600 in 1850 and then $530 in 1870. Recovers to $545 in 1900 and $554 in 1913.

Japan's per person GDP in 1707 is also unavailable. The earliest estimate appears in 1850 and it's $681. Slightly higher than in China.

From here the 2 diverge: Japan's per person GDP goes up to $737 in 1870 (in other words it doesn't stagnate like China) and to $1180 in 1900 (almost double China's). By 1907 it's $1325 and by 1913 it is $1387 (getting close to triple China's). By the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War in 1937 it's almost 4x China's (China: $580, Japan: $2315)

So why does Japan's per person GDP rise and China's per person GDP stagnate?

This is one of those age-old questions that requires many books. I think Japan's case has been talked about in a number of threads so I won't bother to post much here.

China's case is also interesting and I can point to a number of scholars.

Mark Elvin's thesis of High Level Equilibrium Trap in his Pattern of the Chinese Past is one of them.

R. Bin Wong thinks that China didn't stagnate and that it went through economic growth as predicted by Adam Smith in his China Transformed until modern times and makes a very valid criticism that China is a huge country and that the proper comparisons should be with units of equivalent population and regional size.

Kenneth Pomeranz has another take on this issue and argue that it's the West and Japan that diverged with their industrialization and the rest of the world was more like China in his Great Divergence.

The more Marxist oriented economic historians argue that colonialism made the difference. These people in the past argued that imperialism sucked the wealth of China and more recently have come up with a three tiered world systems theory: core, semi-periphery, and periphery.

So China is a case where imperialism downgraded the country from a core status to a semi-periphery and then a periphery status. After 1949, they've clawed their way back to semi-periphery status and is currently on the verge of breaking into a core status. (The scary part of this theory is that you can't have a situation where everyone is a core country under capitalism. If China is going to rise, someone is going to be kicked downstairs.) This school includes people like Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre G. Frank.

In the end you have to read these and more! And then judge for yourself which theory makes the most sense.