Chapter 6 examines the increasing vulnerability of Dutch shipping interests during the 1930s global depression, when Japanese shipping firms challenged the Java-China-Japan Lijn and Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij for control of sea routes between the Netherlands East Indies, Japan, and China. Dutch shippers and the colonial administration believed Japanese companies were taking advantage of Asian trade imbalances during a difficult economic period in the Netherlands East Indies. Despite a series of protective measures, trade agreements, and formal negotiations between Dutch and Japanese interests, Japanese shipping companies used nationalistic and pan-Asianist rhetoric to justify their expropriation of Dutch shipping routes and the Japanese government distributed corresponding propaganda to sway public opinion within the Netherlands East Indies. Diplomatic attempts at halting this influx, along with surveillance of the colony’s Japanese businesses and residents, did nothing to stop these changing power dynamics and colonial subjects – including students and members of the Indonesian press – increasingly traveled to and from Japan during the 1930s.