The thirties saw Japan leaping forward from the advanced positions
conquered during the World War, when it had consolidated its grip on
Eastern markets. Now it expanded into the next ring of countries--India,
the Dutch Indies and the British colonies in East Asia. While Britain’s
share of India’s cotton cloth market fell from 97.1 per cent in 1913-14 to
47.3 per cent in 1935, Japan’s share rose from 0.3 per cent (1913-14) to
50.9 per cent (1935)--taking over the entire British loss. Many of these
countries retaliated with quotas and tariffs in the years 1933-34,
whereupon Japan moved into Latin America. Exports to Central America
increased from 3 million yen in 1931 to 41 million yen in 1936, and to
South America from 10 million yen to Y69 million in the same period. . .
Even where Japan did not take over a market, the high price of British
exports often stimulated the growth of local production, as in Egypt.
Moreover, as a percentage of Japan’s exports, semi-manufactures (including
raw silk) fell from 51.8 per cent of the total in 1914 to 26.4 per cent in
1937; and between 1934 and 1936 the percentage of Japan’s exports which
went to free markets rose from 56 to 65 per cent.
This economic threat led Western business into startling revelations about
factory conditions in Japan, particularly in Britain, which in 1929 had
still been labouring under the hangover of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
Books attacking working conditions in Japan began to appear. As well as the
League of Nations, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was
mobilized in a particularly hypocritical campaign since Britain and France
had expressly prevented ILO stipulations being applied to their sweat-shops
in China when the organization was originally founded. What incensed the
Western powers more than anything was Japan’s refusal to kowtow to
unilateral imperialist self-righteousness: Japanese delegates would turn up
at international conferences and harangue the delegates with the history of
the extermination of the American Indians or the development of the
Lancashire textile industry, or contemporary colonialism in Hong Kong. It
was Japan’s insistence on denouncing inequality among imperialists which
angered the West--not least because it was a line to which there was no
ready answer. Ordinary imperialists were no problem; anti-imperialists
could be written off as terrorists or demagogues; but a fellow imperialist
who both refused to abide by the rules and in practice caused grave
economic trouble was more than could be tolerated.
(From "A Political History of Japanese Capitalism" by Jon Halliday)
Louis Proyect
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