Abstract

"The Mobilisation of Civilian Capital in the Wartime Japanese Empire"

Tsz Ho Wong, University of Edinburgh (t.h.wong-2@sms.ed.ac.uk)

The national debt is the lever used to finance Japan’s major expansions during the Second World War (1931-1945). It covered the cost of state arsenals, and spending on weapons, colonial and government investment, and railways and communications. The national debt was either absorbed by financial institutions on the government’s instructions or came from government reserves, whilst the capital of financial institutions and government reserves are heavily dependent on bank savings, insurance premiums, and postal savings and premiums. In other words, Japan’s war machine was financed by civilian capital. Drawing on Japanese newspapers, advertisements, propaganda, popular science magazines, and joint-stock company yearbooks, this research explores why civilians were willing to contribute their savings to support the Japanese war machine. When a ‘total empire’ was built on the homefront in a total war, it involved the mass and multidimensional mobilisation of domestic society. The Japanese government strategically used a variety of propaganda materials to link the homefront with the battlefront, and subsequently used them to mobilise civilian capital. This research therefore argues that civilians who deposited their savings with the government or financial institutions could imagine how they were being used, even if they were only attracted by the high interest rates promised by the advertisements. By examining Japan’s wartime economic, financial, and scientific mobilisation from a cultural perspective, it hopes to deepen understanding of the financing structure of Japan’s imperial expansion.