the time of the split, but of this final figure 5,879 went to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1925, and only 2,483 to MCI.
14
World War I affected Japan's economy and economic bureaucracy in many significant ways. The war boom itself was extraordinary. In 1914 Japan's total exports and imports combined amounted to about ?1.2
Page 90
billion, but by 1919 this figure had grown to about ?4.5 billion, excluding income from marine transportation and insurance premiums. During the period 191518 exports exceeded imports by about ?1.3 billion, and the Bank of Japan used the profits from these years to pay off all of Japan's foreign debts, to purchase foreign bonds, and to increase the country's gold reserves. At the end of 1918 specie holdings reached ?1.6 billion, about four times the figure for 1913. Some of Japan's established businessmen became rich overnight; Mitsui Trading Company, for example, reported paid-in capital of ?20 million in February 1918, and of ?100 million a year later.
15
Many new firms were established, known at the time as
*
(wartime nouveaux riches). The most famous of these was the new zaibatsu complex of Kaneko Naokichi, whose firms included Suzuki Trading, Kobe Steel, Harima Shipbuilding, Imperial Rayon (Teijin), Japan Flour Milling, Great Japan Celluloid, and Honen* Refining.
16
The Japanese chemical industry started up during the war almost from scratch after exports from Germany, particularly textile dyes, were cut off.
The effect of the war boom on agriculture was equally profound but much less satisfactory. A significant rise in all price levels accompanied the growth of industry (see Table 7), but most important was the rise in demand for rice by the rapidly urbanizing industrial labor force. The government's policy at the outset of the boom was to allow prices to go up, hoping to increase production in that way. This was also what the politically influential landlords wanted. The landlords were organized into the Imperial Agricultural Association (Teikoku Nokai*), founded in 1910 as the successor to the Great Japan Agricultural Association (Dai Nihon Nokai) of 1881, which began as a quasi-official organization for landlords and was oriented toward rural improvements.
17
During the war, however, the Teikoku Nokai became more of a pressure group than an agrarian improvement society. Its interests were in rising prices for domestic rice and high tariffs on imports, which profited both landlords and their tenants.
The new industrialists, on the other hand, wanted prices to fall, both to relieve the pressure on them for wage hikes and to maintain industrial peace. Their organization was the Japan Industrial Club (Nihon Kogyo* Kurabu), which held a preliminary meeting in December 1915 and was formally established on March 10, 1917. Its first officers reflected the club's zaibatsu sponsorship: the chairman of the board was Dan Takuma of Mitsui; the chairman of the council was Toyokawa Ryohei* of Mitsubishi; and the managing directors were Nakajima Kumakichi of Furukawa and Go* Seinosuke, formerly of MAC and then chairman of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Page 91
TABLE
7
(July 1914 = 100)
Month
Index
July 1914
100
March 1919
267
June 1919
295
December 1919
381
March 1920
425
SOURCE
: Fujiwara Akira et al., eds.,
(Basic knowledge of modern Japanese history), Tokyo, 1972, p. 278.
Both the agricultural and industrial groups attempted to influence the government directly and to shape policies in the Diet through their support of political parties. The landlordsled by their president, Matsudaira Koso *, a descendant of the daimyo of Fukui prefecture, and their vice-president, Kuwata Kumazo*, a member of the House of Peersput their faith in the Seiyukai* party and in the upper house, where landlords with large holdings were entitled to seats because of the high taxes they paid. The industrialists were less vocal on the subject of rice prices, but they exercised their influence through their members who were appointed to the various cabinets as minister of agriculture and commerce. The most important of these men was Yamamoto Tatsuo of Mitsubishi, who served as minister in both the Yamamoto Gonnohyoe* cabinet of 191314 and the Hara cabinet of 191821.
The issue of rice prices for city dwellers versus rice prices for farmers came to a head in 1918 when the combination of a bad harvest and the need to supply increased provisions to the armed forces for the Siberian Expedition led to a panic of rice speculation and profiteering. On September 1, 1917, the Terauchi government issued its famous Profiteering Control Ordinance (Bori* Torishimari Rei), which made crimes
