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Why was Wilsonian-Taisho moment lost in Japan in spite of its economic success?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

Yutaka Harada
Yutaka Harada*
Affiliation:
Bank of Japan, 2-1-1 Nihonbashi-Hongokucho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103-8660, Japan
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: harada.econ@gmail.com
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Abstract

Japan during the interwar period was more globalized in many ways than it is now. Japan prospered under the liberal international order. The Japanese people at the time believed that the country needed more land overseas to feed the increasing population, but the growing mainland economy gave jobs to the most Japanese population. The benefits the colonies conferred were not great, but some Japanese, particularly military and civil personnel in the colonies, were major beneficiaries. Japan was among the first to recover from the Great Depression, and by the middle of the 1930s was in a full employment situation. Japan did not need to export its population to other countries or to acquire territories through military action. The military expansion into China and the shift to a controlled economy in Japan and Manchukuo benefitted those who supplied goods to the military and obeyed the authorities. Such benefits, though, came at the expense of Japanese taxpayers and consumers, who were oppressed and were unable to criticize the military. The benefits gained from the military clampdown and a controlled economy were quite visible, but the benefits of the liberal international order often cannot be clearly seen. Japan still had a chance to recognize the true benefits of the liberal international order and the false benefits of colonization, military expansion, and a controlled economy, but could not. Wilsonian-Taisho moment was lost at the end of the 1930s.

Keywords

Colonizationcontrolled economyliberal international ordermilitary expansion
Type
Special Section, The Wilsonian Moment: Japan, 1912–1952 (Edited by Takashi Inoguchi)
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 571 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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