Abstract

"Fresh Capacity for War: The Transformation of Rubber Manufacturing in the Japanese Empire, 1937–1945"

Tom Learmouth, London School of Economics (t.learmouth@lse.ac.uk)

This paper analyses the impact of Japanese wartime mobilisation on the course of East Asian industrialisation by focusing on the crucial WWII industry of rubber manufacturing. Drawing on a rich body of new primary material and Japanese grey literature, it argues that the military restructured Japan’s rubber industry along the lines of the big-business Kurume cluster dominated by Nihon Tabi and Bridgestone. The small-business Kobe cluster, by contrast, faced concentration and marginalisation. This shift was achieved by starving civilian segments such as shoemaking of raw rubber and instead feeding new military sectors such as aircraft tyre manufacturing. The navigation of rubber famines and rubber gluts – particularly after the Japanese capture of Southeast Asia in early-1942 – shaped this military planning.
In analysing this new case study, the paper draws upon Edgerton’s (2006) framing of wartime mobilisation as creating fresh capacity in war economies, along with winners and losers across firms and sectors. The ‘winners’ of the war era were aircraft tyre-makers Bridgestone and Yokohama Rubber which were transformed into multi-plant manufacturing groups. This also involved constructing and managing rubber factories across Japan’s imperial possessions. A key example is the formation of Bridgestone’s overseas manufacturing hub in Tsingtao which is analysed using detailed new evidence from Mitsui Bussan’s Tsingtao branch.
The wartime era is crucial in linking the pre- and post-war regimes of technology diffusion in Japan’s rubber industry. In contrast to a Dunlop-centred regime in the pre-war era, the war produced an industry structure in the post-war tyre industry conducive to rapid technology absorption from diverse U.S. sources. This paper is thus part of a broader analysis which provides industry-level support for the view advanced by Okazaki (1993; 1998) and Johnson (1982) that Japan’s post-war economic system was rooted in institutional adaptations that took place in the war economy.