This paper addresses the relationship between economic development, income inequality and social stability, using the data of prewar Japan. We have made prefecture-level income inequality index, based on tax and wage statistics with respect to four data points, 1888, 1896, 1921 and 1935....

This paper explores the mechanisms by which the industrial organization of the Japanese cotton spinning industry changed over time, focusing on the rise and fall of the firms that integrated spinning and weaving processes. The basic idea is to decompose the change in the proportion of integrated...

During the Second World War, the Japanese government and private sector searched for and implemented new mechanisms for coordination and new incentives. One of these was sangyo hokokukai or sanpo. Sanpo unit was essentially an organization of the employer and employees of each firm, which held...

This paper examines how professional managers diffused among cotton spinning companies in prewar Japan, and analyzes the determinants as well as implications of the employment of professional managers. While simple scale variables such as paid-in capital and production did not correlate with...

While we have rich literature on sangyo hokokukai (sanpo), which was organization of workers established at many companies during the Second World War, few research have been done, examining the role of sanpo quantitatively. In this paper, I propose a hypothesis that sanpo was a mechanism of...

This paper examines the development of the Tokyo Stock Exchange since its inception in 1878 to the mid-1930s. Special attention is paid to the increases in the number of listed stocks throughout this period. By the mid-1930s, the Tokyo Stock Exchange had grown to a market bigger (measured...

This paper explores the change in the security portfolio of the holding company of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu (Mitsubishi Holdings) and its implication on the profitability of that company, during the wartime. In this period, while Mitsubishi Holdings rapidly expanded the total investment in...

In this paper we survey the literature on the role of communities in the development of a market economy in Japan. The role of communities has long been explored implicitly as well as explicitly in the literature on the Japanese economic history. In this survey we focus on the export industries...

　　 In 1932, the Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria, the northeast part of China, and founded a puppet state, Manchukuo. The Kwantung Army and the Manchukuo government intended to develop heavy and chemical industries as well as munitions industries there, but they did not have a...

　　 During the World War II, Japan occupied a large part of East and South East Asia, called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Daitoa Kyoei Ken). This paper overviews what the Japanese military authorities and the government did to develop the occupied areas in the 1930s and...