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Economic Mobilization in Wartime Japan: Business, Bureaucracy, and Military in Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Richard Rice
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Abstract

Most studies of wartime Japan have assumed a close and complementary relationship between business and the military. This essay challenges this view by examining the complexities and tensions of wartime institutional dynamics. The lack of a monolithic industrial and political structure hindered efficient economic mobilization. This can be seen in the industrial control associations (kōgyō tōsei kai), which were intended to be the most important link between military, government, and business after 1941. Their organization and functioning reveals a three-way administrative struggle between business, military, and bureaucracy. All three power groups were internally divided over both the formulation and the implementation of policy. Japan, the epitome of government-business cooperation in the postwar era, was surprisingly divided during the war.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , August 1979 , pp. 689 - 706
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1979

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References

1 Sir George Sansom, in the foreword to Cohen, Jerome B., Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1949), p. viiGoogle Scholar. Cohen's book is still the most complete in English on the wartime economy.

2 Bisson, Thomas, Japan's War Economy (New York: Institute of Pacific Affairs, 1945), p. viiiGoogle Scholar; Cohen, p. 85.

3 Fairbank, J. K., Reischauer, E. O., and Craig, A. M., East Asia: The Modern Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 602Google Scholar. These authors take the position that zaibatsu wanted lucrative defense contracts but also wanted to retain their autonomy. Roberts, John G., Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business (New York: Weatherhill, 1973), p. 341Google Scholar, supports this interpretation. On the other hand, Hadley, Eleanor M., Antitrust in Japan (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), p. 42Google Scholar, takes the view that economic incentives offered to businessmen by the military prove that zaibatsu were active allies of the military. However, Marshall, Byron, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite, 1868–1941 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1967), p. 106Google Scholar, correctly notes that more study needs to be done on this issue. For an example of an individual company in the crosscurrents of wartime economic controls, see my “Hitachi: Japanese Industry in an Era of Militarism, 1937–1945” (Diss. Harvard University 1974).

4 In recent years Nakamura and Hara have added greatly to our understanding of the war economy: Takafusa, Nakamura, Senzenki Nihon keizai seichō no bunseki (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971)Google Scholar; Nakamura, Kokka sōdōin, Vol. XLI1I of Gendaishi shiryō (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 1970)Google Scholar; Nakamura, , Nihon no keizai tōsei (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1974)Google Scholar; “Sensō keizai to sono hōkai,” in Iwanami kōza Nihon rekishi, XXI (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), 109–55Google Scholar. Hara has summed up some of their findings in “L'économie Japonaise Pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale,” Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, 89 (1973), 33–56Google Scholar. See also Takafusa, Nakamura, Takashi, Ito, and Akira, Hara, Gendaishi o tsukuru hitobito (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1973)Google Scholar for interviews with important industrialists. Also useful are Ryōichi, Miwa, “Jūkagaku kōgyoka to keizai seisaku,” Shakai keizai shigaku, 41: 6 (1976), 51–69Google Scholar; and Harumi, Matsushima, “Sangyō tōsei no kyōka to senji keizai (denryōku kokka kanri) e no dōtei,” Shakai keizai shigaku, 41: 6 (1976), 70–93Google Scholar.

5 Yoshimori, Watanabe, “Senjika no shihonchi-kuseki to ‘Busshi dōin keikaku,’” Keizaigaku zasshi, 75: 2 (August 1976), 67–91Google Scholar. Like other Marxist writers, Watanabe sees capital accumulation and growth of large zaibatsu economic units as the hidden reason for mobilization policy, but the causality is the reverse: only the heavy and technically advanced sectors dominated by the zaibatsu could fill military needs.

6 Milward, Alan S., War, Economy and Society, 1939–1945 (History of the World Economy in the Twentieth Century, No. 5) (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977), p. 34Google Scholar. This stimulating comparative study argues, that economic strategy was determined not only by resources, but by political and economic concepts, as seen in this equation:

Gross Product = p + r + s + e−f where p is peacetime national product, r reserves available in the economy, s savings from lowering the rate of capital replacement, e external resources (in Japan's case the Co-Prosperity Sphere), and f the reduced efficiency caused by administrative friction. This last factor was particularly important in Japan. Milward correctly points out (p. 32) that the potential resources of the Co-Prosperity Sphere could only be tapped by a high level of capital investment, but that same capital was needed in Japan.

7 Takatoshi, Kimura, “Senji kokka kanri keizai to zaibatsu dokusen,” Keizai shūshi, 45: 4 (1976), 16Google Scholar. Watanabe, pp. 68–69.

8 Watanabe, p. 7 1.

9 Milward, p. 35. He focuses on this issue in an earlier article, “The End of the Blitzkrieg,” The Economic History Review, 16: 3 (1964), 499–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 No economic czars emerged in Japan, as they did in the democracies. U.S. mobilization went through several stages of centralization under the direction of William S. Knudsen, the president of General Motors, and Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the board of Sears, but labor allocation was not tied to resource allocation until the creation of the Office of War Mobilization in May 1943. It was headed by a political crony of Roosevelt's, James F. Byrnes. In England the Lord President's Committee, established in January 1941, centralized most resource allocations, while Ernest Bevin, secretary of the largest trade union, entered the government in 1940 to carry out drastic labor policies (Milward, pp. 239–40.)

11 Hitachi Seisakmhōshi (Tokyo: Hitachi insatsusho, 1961), II, 40Google Scholar. This attitude was typical. Cohen (pp. 28–30) cites other examples of criticism of red tape.

12 Bōeichō bōeikenshūjō senshishitsu, Rikugun gunjū dōin (Tokyo: Asagumo shinbunsha, 1970), II, 418Google Scholar and 589, quoted by Watanabe, p. 76. One investigation of aircraft plants concluded that forty-five percent of scarce aluminum went into non-military production. Some of this “diversion” wound up as consumer goods, but companies also produced machine tools and other capital goods that they sold or bartered with other firms; these contributed to the nation's total productive capacity and thus were not lost to the war effort. For obvious reasons, it is unlikely that we will ever know the full extent and impact of diversion.

13 Rikugun gunjū dōin, II, p. 824. Given the extent of economic controls created by 1944 and the military's designation of some companies as “munitions firms,” directly under military super-vision, there is some reason to question the term “civilian,” yet on the whole the management of these plants did not change. In most cases the former manager was designated the “responsible person” answerable to the Munitions Ministry.

14 Watanabe, p. 76.

15 konwakai, Nentyō, Nihon kaigun nenryōshi (Tokyo: Daiichi insatsu, 1972), I, 93Google Scholar and 98–99. Kawai, Kazuo observes in Japan's American Interlude (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 118Google Scholar, that “…the [wartime] bureaucrats were often singularly unperceptive and devoid of commonsense in matters outside their established routine.” Wartime lack of coordination is difficult to reconcile with the postwar business-government cooperation that virtually all scholars have noted. Space does not permit a discussion of this apparent contradiction, but a partial explanation may be that postwar government has been controlled, through the Liberal Democratic Party, by business, and so has reflected its policies and goals. Also, by 1945 a good deal of administrative experience had been accumulated despite the failure of the economy. With the military discredited and no longer a political factor, a new consensus in favor of reconstruction and future growth determined policy. The postwar administrative structure implementing policy has not faced the same social and political tensions described in this paper.

16 For an interesting survey of interpretation on this issue, see Wilson, George M., “A New Look at the Problem of ‘Japanese Fascism,’” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10: 4 (1968), 401–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Milward, p. 117. See also Polenberg, Richard, War and Society (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1972), pp. 5–36Google Scholar, for a brief overview of the American war economy.

18 Tsūshō sangyōshōhen, Sangyō tōsei, Vol. XII of Shōkō seisakushi (Tokyo: Shoko seisakushi kankōkai, 1964), p. 508Google Scholar, presents a chart showing each control association, date of designation, the president of each organization, and his previous position. All were businessmen. Twelve control associations were designated in 1941 and ten were added later.

19 Sangyō tōsei, p. 11. Lockwood, William W., The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change, 1868–1938 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1954)Google Scholar, ch. x, develops the concept that the government avoided state involvement in economic activity except during the early Meiji and the 1930s. See also the comment on this issue made by Saxonhouse, Gary, “A Tale of Japanese Technological Diffusion in the Meiji Period,” The Journal of Economic History, 34: 1 (March 1974), 151, n. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Sangyō tōsei, p. 52; Schumpeter, Elizabeth B., ed., The Industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo, 1930–40 (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 745Google Scholar.

21 Nakamura, Nihon no keizai tōsei, pp. 23 and 27.

22 Cohen, p. 29.

23 Rikugun gunjū dōin, I, 18–19.

24 Allen, G. C., A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, 1867–1937 (New York: Praeger, 1963), pp. 136–37Google Scholar.

25 Mitsuhaya, Kajinishi, Zoku Nihon shihonshugi (Tokyo: Yūbikaku, 1957), pp. 174–75Google Scholar, Chart 24. See also the discussion of economic transition in the 1931–1936 period by Akira, Hara, “Senji tōseikeizai no kaishi,” Iwanami kōza Nihon rekishi, XX (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), 218–20Google Scholar.

26 Roberts, p. 264.

27 See Sangyō tōsei, pp. 177–82, for the complete text.

28 Tsūshō sangyōshō jūkōgyō kyokuhen, Nihon no kikai kōgyō—sono seichō to kōzō (Tokyo: Nihon jūkōgyō kenkyūkai, 1960), p. 56Google Scholar.

29 Hitachi, II, 4 and 40. See also Cohen, p. 31.

30 Takafusa, Nakamura and Akira, Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” in gakkai, Nihon seiji, eds., Konoe shintaisei no kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1972), p. 115Google Scholar.

31 Sangyō tōsei, p. 465.

32 Masao, Maruyama, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 127Google Scholar. While Maruyama is correct on this point, economic administration does not support his view of Japan as a totalitarian political system.

33 Nakamura and Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” p. 115; and Nihon no keizai tōsei, pp. 23 and 27.

34 Sangyō tōsei, p. 508.

35 Nakamura and Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” p. 119.

36 Nakamura and Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” pp. 117–18.

37 Hitachi, II, 33.

38 Daigorō, Yasukawa, Waga kaisōroku (Tokyo: Hyakusen shōbō, 1970), p. 49Google Scholar.

39 Naonobu, Hayakawa, Hitachi no keiei (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1971), p. 162Google Scholar.

40 Hayakawa, p. 162.

41 Hayakawa, p. 163.

42 Hayakawa, p. 164. Hayakawa was a reporter for the Nihon keizai shinbun at the time, and when he interviewed leaders of the electric industry, other candidates were considered bad choices for one reason or another. The industry had a large role in the selection of Yasukawa, but the military and the ministries did not; Yasukawa was not an unpopular candidate forced on the industry by the military or government bureaucracy. See Yasukawa, p. 228.

43 Yasukawa, p. 99.

44 Hayakawa, p. 165. The government, of course, had ideas on how the association should be organized, which added to the discord. According to Yasukawa, Kajii claimed the military wanted a dual system. Kajii's candidacy for vice president was initially supported by the military, but when Yasukawa resisted, they did not push the matter. Kajii had worked for the Communications Ministry, which accounts for his later contacts there. After a study trip to Germany, England, and the United States, he became chief of the Ministry's telephone and telegraph section.

45 Nakamura and Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” p. 115.

46 Hayakawa, p. 166. Yasukawa noted (p. 100) that after Odaira declined the position of association president, newspapers reported that Yamaguchi was interested in the job. Yasukawa believed that this story originated not just with Yamaguchi's supporters but with Yamaguchi himself, showing a distasteful display of self-interest.

47 Yasukawa, p. 100.

48 Hayakawa, p. 164.

49 Yasukawa, p. 100.

50 Hayakawa, p. 173.

51 Yasukawa, p. 101.

52 Yasukawa, p. 44.

53 Yasukawa, p. 100.

54 Yasukawa, p. 100.

55 Yasukawa, p. 103. Kajii's main influence apparently was in the Communications Ministry; see footnote 44 above.

56 Hayakawa, p. 170–71. Like Yasukawa, Matsumae Shigeyoshi was also a graduate of Tokyo University. He became an electrical engineering authority and Chief of the General Affairs Section of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

57 Hayakawa, p. 172.

58 Hayakawa, p. 172. Hayakawa accepts Yasukawa's explanation as to the source of the trouble.

59 Yasukawa, p. 103.

60 Yasukawa, p. 104.

61 Kōnosuke, Kōnō, Yasukawa Daigorō (Tokyo: Nihon jihōsha shuppanbu, 1957), p. 203Google Scholar.

62 Kōnō, p. 101. Of course Yasukawa did so from the hindsight of the postwar period. In fairness, it must be noted that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was in no position to defy the military openly.

63 Sangyō tōsei, p. 592.

64 Yasukawa, p. 101.

65 Yasukawa, p. 102.

66 Yasukawa, p. 99.

67 Yasukawa, p. 104.

68 Yasukawa, p. 105.

69 Yasukawa, p. 105.

70 Yasukawa, p. 105.

71 Yasukawa, p. 105. Maruyama (pp. 84–131) takes up the issue of an “undeveloped sense of responsibility.” He accuses wartime leaders of taking “refuge in one's competence or jurisdiction” (p. 103). This myopic tendency is exactly why Yasukawa called the navy's attitude “irre-sponsible.”

72 Nakamura and Hara, “Keizai shintaisei,” p. 120. Even after the Munitions Ministry was established in November 1943, service rivalry continued to plague production. For example, mass production of aircraft was hindered by the services ordering different parts for each of their planes: Saburō, Hayashi and Coox, Alvin, Kōgun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War (Quantico, Va.: The Marine Corps Association, 1959), p. 80Google Scholar. Butow, Robert J. C., Tōjō and the Coming of the War (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), p. 426Google Scholar, evaluates the Munitions Ministry in similar terms: “as a practical matter, however, this innovation [the Munitions Ministry] had affected only the form and not the essence. The Munitions Ministry very soon found its efficiency being impaired by virtue of the fact that the supreme command, which placed orders for aircraft, was still composed of separate army and navy divisions.”

73 Kōnō, p. 203.

74 Yasukawa, p. 106.