Michiya Kato

After graduating from Sapporo Agricultural School, KOMAI Tokuzo joined South Manchurian Railway Co., Ltd. and was assigned to the Regional Department. He actively engaged in several investigative studies of Manchuria. As the first Director of the General Affairs Agency of Manchukuo, he played a key role in the early governance of the 'colony' after the Manchurian Incident. One finds suggestions for Japan's continental policy in reports based on surveys during his tenure and autobiographical writings published after retirement. This paper examines KOMAI's writings and attempts to clarify the perceptions of colonial rule held by Japanese bureaucrats.

OUCHI Ushinosuke, a Graduate of Shule des Vereins für deutsche Wissenschaften, (The German Studies Society School) held several key Bureaucratic Positions in Colonial Taiwan and Kwanto Leased Territory with GOTO Shimpei. He wrote numerous Books and Reports on Japanese Colonial Rule and his Opinions of how it should be conducted. This Paper examines OUCHI's Writings and attempts at clarifying the Perceptions of Colonial Rule held by Japanese Bureaucrats and its Reality in Prewar Japan.

The Japanese Colonial Bureaucrat, YOSHIMURA Gentaro, who worked for the Colonial Bureau established in 1917, wrote numerous Reports on the British Colonial Policy. In one of his Reports entitled, ''Eiteikoku no Toitsu Mondai'' (Problems of British Imperial Unity), he researched the situation of the British Empire and the Debates concerning the Relation between the Britain and her Dominions. This Paper aims to clarify how he understood the British Empire and the Governance of Dominions.

YOSHIMURA Gentaro, who was in charge of the Japanese Colonial Policy at the Government General of Kwantung Leased Territory in the prewar period. After retiring from his post, he wrote Nan'a renpo-ron (A Study of the Union of South Africa) and in it, he analyzed the British colonia policy and its effects from the historical perspective. By a perusal of YOSHIMURA's work, this paper attempts to clarify how he understood British rule and governance of South Africa.

YOSHIMURA Gentaro was a colonial bureaucrat who was engaged in the Colonial Bureau after he had retired from the Japanese Government Bureau of Kwantung Leased Teritory. He published two reports on the independence movement in Colonial India. In these reports, he criticized not only the British rule in India but also the extremists in the independence movement and insisted that Home Rule was the most preferable answer for both British Empire and Colonial India although he had a very pessimistic view on it.

YOSHIMURA Gentaro was a colonial bureaucrat who served at the Home Office, the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, and the Japanese Government-General of Kwantung Leased Territory from 1899 to 1914. From 1917, he was engaged in the Colonial Bureau and published two reports on Egypt: ''Egyptian Problems'' (1921) and ''Irish and Egyptian Problems'' (1922). In these reports, he criticized fundamentally the British rule in Egypt because the British policy in Egypt, based on the paternalistic view, failed to handle the independence movement by the Egyptian people. Although YOSHIMURA criticezed the British rule in Egypt, it does not necessaryily mean that he was critical with the imperialism itself. Rather he believed that Japan should take more leadership in Asia in order to protect Asia from 'unfair intervention' by the Western Powers. His views on the colonial rule, in my opinion, were in line with the colonial policy adopted by the Japanese government at the time.

YOSHIMURA Gentaro,an government official serving in the Japanese Government General of Kanto Leased Territory surveyed the British colonial situations including Ireland. He observed the Irish situation under British control and had the important lessons from it. His conclusion was that British governnance of Ireland should be seen as a failure because it lacked the mutual trust. He criticized severely the way of British governnance of Ireland but did not deny the colonial rule itself. He rather interpreted the Japanese colonian rule as an antidote against the western expansion to Asia and Japan should tale a more leading role in Asia.

TOKINAGA Urazo, an exective bureaucrat of Government-General of Korea, was appointed as Director of Home Office of Ohita Prefecture in October 1922. TOKINAGA was famous for his research on the Korean and the Irish Independence Movement. He traveled in the Inited States and Europe including Britain where the Irish Immigrants fought for their country's freedom. His main interest was how Japanese officials could rule Koreans who were not satisfied with the Japanese colonial rule. At that time, the Japanese government tried to share the way of governance both in Inland and the colonies through personnel exchanges between the Home Office and the Government-General of Korea. Several distinctive Home Office's bureaucrats were appointed as the executive staffs in Korea, but the bureaucrats of Government-General of Korea rarely had appointments in Inland Japan as administrative staffs. TOKINAGA's case was the rare one. In this paper, we try to show its meaning through TOKINAGA's career and to clarify the personnel relationship between Inland Japan and Colonial Korea.

The Japanese central government and its local authorities undertook public works as a response to rising unemployment like most European countries including Britain between the wars. The approach was in line with the recommendation of the International Labour Conference in 1919 which stated that 'the Conference recommends that each Member of the International Labour Organisation co-ordinate the execution of all work undertaken under public authority with a view to reserving such work as far as practicable for periods of unemployment'. In interwar Britain, the role of the unemployment relief works remained very limited. On the other hand, Japanese unemployment relief works remained central to the Japanese government's response in the absence of any compulsory unemployment insurance scheme. In this paper, we try to clarify what was unique to Japan's unemployment relief works policy and what was common with the unemployment relief works between Britain and Japan in the interwar years.

TOKINAGA Urazo, an official of Japanese Government-General of Korea, visited the United States in 1919 in order to investigate the Korean Independence Movement in the US. He wrote the Report on it in 1920 and the Japanese Government-General of Korea edited it for internal use. In the Report, TOKINAGA compared the Korean Independence Movement with the Irish one and at the same time, considered its influence in the international context. As a result, he concluded that the influence of the Korean Independence Movement in the US was quite limited unlike the Irish one and the Japanese Government-General of Korea was able to keep Colonial Korea under the Japanese rule.

TOKINAGA Urazo, an official serving for thirteen years between 1910 and 1922 in the Japanese Government-General of Korea, visited the US and Europe to study and understand the influence of self-determination advocated by President T.W.Wilson in relation to the Koreans under Japanese rule during World War I. He observed the situation of Ireland under British control and compared its aspects with the Japanese rule over Korea. His conclusion was that Japanese colonial rule of Korea was totally different from the British governance of Ireland. Although he thought that the British were cruel and suppressive, on several points there was a need for the Japanese Government-General of Korea to learn important lessons from the British failure to establish order in Ireland.

In the interwar years, government officials of Japan began to express concerns about the absence of any specific unemployment data and were receptive to the recommendation of the International Labour Office that the problem of unemployment should be subject to systematic investigation. Two surveys were conducted by the government. Unemployment Statistical Survey of 1925 and the 1930 Census, but they just revealed relatively low unemployment rates. Contemporary critics knew that the data failed to capture issues such as over-employment and the capacity of many individuals out of work to escape any survey count. There was some official recognition of such deficiencies in the decision from 1929 to initiate monthly returns on the numbers unemployed in each prefecture. On the basis of the available evidence, we have drawn attention to the paucity of contemporary data, how it lead to spasmodic attempts at improving the unemployment count and to the sources of monthly data upon which aggregate figures were produced and have been used internationally by labour organization or scholars since which distorted the reality of Japan's interwar unemployment.

In the interwar years, Japan shared a concern to many many Western industrialized nations to seek balance of payments and employment stability on the basis of a gold standard system at the pre-war parity. In order to do so, governments introduced a mild deflationary policy but only to be suffered from stagnation of economy and employment. The combination of the Manchurian Incident and the Britain's decision to abandon the gold standard convinced Japan that maintaining the pre-war gold par was impossible and in December 1931, the Japanese gold standard was abandoned. After 1932, military expenditure of employment and it effected on employment of the skilled workers. But the improvement of production reversed the shock absorber effect of the agricultural sector pushing casual workers into industrial cities.

In this paper, we try to clarify the significance of migration policy and its changing character in the interwar period in relation to unemployment problem. It started to emigrate Japanese to other countries but couldn't succeed. After 1925, Unemployment Relief Works began to ameriorate unemployment problem but it just deteriorate situation because Korean immigrants occupied considerable proportion in the scheme unexpectedly. Therefore, the government at that time tried to emigrate Korean people, who tended to immigrate to mainland Japan, to Manchuria in order to reduce the pressure of over-population in mainland Japan. When 'Manchukuo' was created in 1932, this trend was enforced. As a result, this policy influenced on the Asian labour market in the great extent and changed the nature of it.

Under the chronic recession in the 1920s, industrial rationalization through the reorganization of production process and improvement of technology was pursued in Japan under the influence of Germany and the United States. In this paper, we examined the relationship between industrial rationalization and unemployment, and concluded that various reforms were taken place in the name of industrial rationalization, but it meant for the government, the cartelization policy, for entrepreneurs, the reduction of production costs such as wages and working hours. It was revealed that they were not effective as a measure against unemployment because they did not mean anything beyond their own intentions and there was no consensus among them.

The Japanese government, which had predicted the arrival of a recession after World War I, was researching and studying the unemployment policies working in the Western countries. There has been a lot of lively debates about the unemployment insurance system which was central to unemployment policy among many countries. This paper examines the pros and cons of the unemployment insurance system discussed in the Social Affairs Bureau or among the entrepreneurs by using the documents at that time, the internal materials of the government, thesis published at the same period, etc. and clarified why Japan did not introduced the compulsory unemployment insurance system unlike the many western countries and did what kind of system in place of it.

Japan experienced an unprecedented economic boom during World War I and became one of the members of the developed countries at that time, but she faced the unemployment problem at the arrival of the global recession following the end of the war. The recession that came after prosperity highlighted social problems that had not been taken seriously until then. Japan faced the absence of any systematic unemployment policies equivalent to its international status, and it sought to introduce the systems of the United Kingdom etc. when the International Labor Organization recommended to establish proper unemployment policies. Public debate was made on how to harmonize the recommendation and the present situation of Japan. By using the historical documents at that time, I clarified how Japanese government tried to introduce the unemployment policies already working in Europe and the United States in a form that suits Japan under the rapidly changing international economic environment.

The 19th century potters were searching for a way to self-help in order to reduce the risk of poverty when they became unable to work under the changing domestic and international market trends. There were two types of trade unions at that time, the ‘New Model Union’ which pursued the industrial arbitration and conciliation and the ‘Old Union’ which fought against entrepreneurs to realize their demands. In this paper, I examined the pottery industry’s trade unions and showed that there was also a ‘Third Type Union’ which was not applicable to the above two types.