著者

加藤 道也 カトウ ミチヤ Michiya KATO

雑誌

大阪産業大学経済論集

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, no.2, pp.153-189, 2011-02

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YOSHIMURA Gentaro was a colonial bureaucrat who served at the Home Office, the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, and the Japanese Government-General of Kwantung Leased Territory from 1899 to 1914. From 1917, he was engaged in the Colonial Bureau and published two reports on Egypt: Egyptian Problems (1921) and Irish and Egyptian Problems (1922). In these reports, he criticized fundamentally the British rule in Egypt because the British policy in Egypt, based on the paternalistic view, failed to handle the independence movement by the Egyptian people. Although YOSHIMURA criticized the British rule in Egypt, it does not necessarily mean that he was critical with the imperialism itself. Rather he believed that Japan should take more leadership in Asia in order to protect Asia from `unfair intervention' by the Western Powers. His views on the colonial rule, in my opinion, were in line with the colonial policy adopted by the Japanese government at the time.

著者

加藤 道也 カトウ ミチヤ Michiya KATO

雑誌

大阪産業大学経済論集

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, no.1, pp.37-60, 2007-10

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In the interwar years, Japan shared a concern common to many Western industrialized nations to seek balance of payments and employment stability on the basis of a gold standard system at the pre-war parity. In order to do so, governments introduced a mild deflationary policy but only to be suffered from stagnation of economy and employment. After Japan returned to the gold standard in 1930, exchange rate began to rise and it threatened a decrease of export level. Domestic demand declined and job losses spread to the chemical and heavy industries and to the mining industry. But with the government determined to continue fiscal and monetary restriction, merely awaiting a recovery from depression, both firms and farms lost their trading strength and unemployment grew. The combination of the Manchurian Incident and the Britain's decision to abandon the gold standard convinced Japan that maintaining the pre-war gold par was impossible and in December 1931, the Japanese gold standard was abandoned. After 1932, military expenditure was increased and it effected on employment of the skilled workers. But the improvement of employment was limited to the casual workers as the relatively poor recovery of agricultural production reversed the shock absorber effect of the agricultural sector pushing casual workers into industrial cities.