Abstract

The economic and business activities in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong (1941-1945) remained largely uncharted, particularly those of local Chinese companies. This paper draws on the company registration records compiled by the Japanese occupation authorities to examine the financing of Chinese businesses in Hong Kong in the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that these companies maintained close linkages with the Pearl River Delta through marriage and kinship networks. Furthermore, as many of these corporations were family holding companies that invested in land and shares, the paper compares the financing and organisational structures of these Chinese firms with that of Japanese family holding companies at the time. When the occupation began in December 1941, many zaibatsu-related Japanese companies started to open branches in Hong Kong, and many of them, like their Chinese counterparts, were financed by the family holding companies. In short, this paper explores how family wealth was transformed by wars, state direction, family and kinship networks, and also by the increasing demand for capital.

Abstract

Japan’s colonial economy during WWII has often been characterised as haphazard, mismanaged, dysfunctional, and a violent exploitation and depredation of capital and resources. The latter was evident in its money creation schemes in the occupied territories, including Hong Kong. Drawing on financial and banking archives, in particular those of the Yokohama Specie Bank, this paper explores the monetary history of occupied Hong Kong from two perspectives: the circulation of unbacked credit and the subsequent money-printing inflation; and how Hong Kong became a currency exchange centre to divert the colonial hyperinflationary pressures to Japan’s home islands. The military scrip circulating in Hong Kong was predominantly brought in by the occupation authorities from Japan and occupied China, and some was printed locally. Using unpublished financial data, this paper examines the severity of inflation in Hong Kong and compares it with other commercial centres occupied by Japan, such as Beijing and Shanghai. In the later stages of WWII, due to the Japanese government’s loose and incomplete currency controls, Hong Kong had become an exchange hub for Japanese in the occupied territories to transfer their hyperinflated savings back home, exacerbating shortage-induced inflation in Japan. By detailing this process, this paper will show how Japan’s domestic economy was affected, damaged, and gradually encroached upon by its own exploitative colonial economy. The monetary history of wartime Hong Kong thus illustrates the city’s critical role in the yen bloc and offers a comparative perspective for examining monetary policy in different Japanese wartime colonies.

Abstract

Soon after the occupation of Hong Kong in December 1941, the Japanese military authorities decided to turn Hong Kong into a major entrepôt of the Japanese Empire. A 1944 publication even described Hong Kong as the nucleus (chūkaku) of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. This paper will show that Japanese researchers, geographers, and economists in the early twentieth century had noted the geographical characteristics of Hong Kong, and thus emphasised its economic importance as a major entrepôt in East and Southeast Asia. Based on their research, the Japanese occupation authorities prepared to develop Hong Kong into an imperial entrepôt for, in Jeremy A. Yellen’s words, their envisioned ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. To this end, several major trading companies were operated in Hong Kong, including Asano Bussan, Mitsui Bussan, Mitsubishi Corporation, and the Ōmi merchant-related Gōshū Company, together with financial intermediaries such as the Yokohama Specie Bank and Yasuda Life Insurance. Hong Kong was geographically close to Guangxi, and the Japanese army may have used it as one of their supply depots during Operation Ichi-Gō (Ichi-gō sakusen) in 1944. It is also worth noting that the Yokohama Specie Bank made a profit by exchanging military scrip issued in Hong Kong for yen in Japan. This, along with similar practices in other Japanese colonies, probably contributed to inflation in Japan, cheapened the yen currency, and eventually shifted the cost of the war to civilians as the Japanese government was able to pay lower returns to national bondholders. The case of Hong Kong therefore illustrates the economic structure of the Empire, the activities of Japanese corporations in the newly occupied colonies during the Pacific War, and the financial relations between the Empire’s metropole and its peripheries.

Abstract

During WWII, Japan infamously established Unit 731, Unit 100, and Unit 516 in its puppet state Manchukuo to conduct research into and produce weapons for epizootic and bacteriological warfare. Less well known is Japan’s use of chemical warfare in coastal China and Southeast Asia from the late 1930s to the armistices. Drawing on Japanese, American, British, and Chinese archives, this paper argues that, as with germ warfare, Japan did extensive research on the climate, weather, and geography of East and Southeast Asia, and the effects on chemicals to humans and animals decades before utilising chemical weapons. Other than detailing Japan’s pre-war research on chemical warfare, this paper traces the wartime manufacturing of chemical weapons and chemical warfare-related equipment, such as (toxic) smoke generators, chemicals for producing toxic smoke, and gas masks and leggings for humans and horses. The declassified documents provide the names of the companies involved in the production, the locations of the factories, and the origins of the raw materials for these weapons and equipment. Many of these materials, like rubber, came from Japan’s (wartime) colonies, including Taiwan, Chōsen, Malaya and Indonesia. This paper thus suggests that Japan’s preparation for chemical warfare and its manufacturing of related weapons and equipment exemplify an assemblage of the production and application of biomedical and environmental knowledge as well as the exploitation of natural resources. 

Abstract

Inspired by Kimberly Kay Hoang’s recent publication Spiderweb Capitalism, this paper utilises the non-ferrous metals industry to illustrate structures of capital networks within wartime Japanese Empire’s dual-use items industries. Non-ferrous metals are essential for producing dual-use items, which are vital to maintain a flexible wartime economy. During WWII, Japan operated numerous mines to manufacture non-ferrous metals, and the production reached its zenith in the twilight of the Empire. Drawing on Japanese, American, British, and Chinese military, intelligence, and governmental archives, this paper surveys the business operators of the Japanese non-ferrous metals production-related mines at its homeland, colonial Taiwan, Chōsen, Manchuria, coastal China, and its wartime colonies in Southeast Asia, and reconstructs the capital networks of these operators by utilising yearbooks of share companies published by the securities companies. Similar to the contemporary Spiderweb Capitalism, a majority of these mines were controlled by the zaibatsu’s subordinate companies (agents/subordinate spiders), whilst the major stockholders (dominant spiders) like zaibatsu families, aristocrats, imperial household-related bureaucrats and national policy companies hidden behind the ‘star network’, which were formed through cross ownerships and intermarriages (spider silk). This research uses Gephi, a network analysis and visualisation tool to analyse and present the networks involving more than a thousand individuals and organisations; and to calculate and measure who the central figures are, the intermediaries between the networks, and the influence of each figure. It shows how the wartime Japanese political-military-economic clique used the capital networks to collectively fund and thereby sustain the exploitation of colonial resources and the production of the non-ferrous metals and other dual-use items industries. Through Gephi’s visualisation and computation, this paper further explores the personnel and organisations that acted as the capital resources of Japan’s wartime dual-use items industries, opening a window to explore the patterns of how the power elites of the Japanese empire financed their war machine.

Abstract

Non-ferrous metals, including lead, zinc, copper, aluminium and magnesium, are essential for producing dual-use items, which were vital to maintain a flexible wartime economy. During WWII, Japan operated numerous mines to manufacture non-ferrous metals, and the production reached its zenith in the twilight of the Empire, for instance, lead yields consecutively increased from 25,832 tonnes in 1942 to 32,031 tonnes in 1943 and 33,670 tonnes in 1944. Yet, how did these mines operate, and more importantly, how was the operation shaped by and cooperated with the war economy and mobilisation? This paper uses Japanese, American, and British military, intelligence and governmental archives to survey the business operators of the Japanese non-ferrous metals production-related mines at its homeland, its occupied Taiwan, Chōsen, Manchuria, coastal China, and its wartime colonies in Southeast Asia during the early 1940s, and reconstructs the capital networks of these operators by utilising yearbooks of share companies published by the securities companies at that time. This paper suggests that a majority of mines were controlled by zaibatsu and its subordinate companies, whilst the major stockholders were other zaibatsu, aristocrats, imperial household-related bureaucrats, and national policy companies, and they together formed and consolidated a ‘star network’ (the centre and the periphery parts of the network, and the networks in these two parts, were well-connected) through cross ownerships and intermarriages. Intriguingly, the zaibatsu who operated or invested in non-ferrous metals industry, its subordinate companies and affiliated laboratories were also engaged in researching, developing and producing dual-use items, which was funded by other zaibatsu, aristocrats, imperial household-related bureaucrats, and national policy companies. This paper therefore utilises the non-ferrous metals industry as an example, illustrating the patterns of the capital networks of the wartime Japanese Empire’s dual-use items industries.  

Abstract

Rare-earth elements (ki genso or kiyū genso) are soft heavy metals extracted from minerals. For example titanium can be extracted from rutile and sphene, zirconium from zircon and naegite, and cerium, neodymium, yttrium, scandium and thorium from monazite. It can be used for manufacturing war-related materiel, like ballistic steel, radioactive weaponry, carbon rods for searchlights and vacuum tubes for wireless telegraphy. Japan launched at least three expeditions between 1942 and 1944 in unearthing rare-earth and chemical elements in Northeast China (Manchuria and Mongolia) and Southeast Asia (Burma, Jawa, Sumatra, Banda Island, Belitung Island, North Borneo and the East Coast of Malaya). Unlike the wartime scientific, ethnographic and geographical research conducted by other research institutions like the Ministry of Education’s Research Institute for Natural Resources, this paper argues that the expeditions on rare-earth and chemical elements were driven by the needs of manufacturing war-related technologies.

Japan’s research on rare-earths can be traced back to the 1900s. They started to search for rare-earths in their colonies and neighbouring countries after realising that their country only stored a few of it. For example the survey conducted by Iimori Laboratory in Chōsen in 1934; and Okada Ietake, a researcher at the Shanghai Research Institute for Natural Sciences, explored the rare-earth and chemical elements in Southwest China in 1935 and 1936. Before 1941, Japan imported most of the rare-earths used in its industry, but was forced to self-supply it after the outbreak of the Pacific War; and thus they launched the aforementioned expeditions. According to the wartime newspapers, publications and military archives, these expeditions were supported by the army, and conducted by scientists and geographers from zaibatsu like Riken and the Science Mobilisation Council. Also, the rare-earth and chemical elements that they aimed to explore were indispensable for producing war-related technologies, such as beryllium for high speed steel, neodymium for optical filter, tantalum for the vacuum tubes for wireless telegraphy, strontium and zirconium for the carbon rods of searchlights and thorium as the catalyst for liquifying coal. This paper examines Japan’s research on rare-earth and chemical elements in the early twentieth century; and how these “academic-military-industrial” expeditions were motivated by the needs of manufacturing war-related technologies.

Abstract

This research consists of two parts. The first is an article that examines Liang Yen’s relations with the American global propaganda campaigns in the first phase of the Cold War. It offers preliminary research on Liang’s early life in mainland China and her family and attempt to explain why she probably lied about her age and other contradictions in her autobiography. It also examines how her autobiographies were used for American propaganda, and how their publications were possibly related to Lattimore’s research and the competition of book distribution with the Soviet Union. The second part surveys the social networks of Liang and other five Chinese intellectuals who have a similar background with Liang and also worked for American propaganda campaigns-related organisations. By examining the networks, this research identified several prominent figures and families in late imperial and modern Chinese history intermediaries between Liang and other Chinese intellectuals. This suggests that there was continuity between the elite/intellectual networks of the late Qing and those of the 1950s.