水産会社と総合商社の協調と反発

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抄録

Kyodo Gyogyo Fisheries Company developed into the biggest fishing company in Japan, owning 71.6% of trawlers in the 1930s. It decided to expand into shrimp trawling off the west coast of Mexico in 1934. Since 1929, the soga shosha Mitsui Bussan had imported Galveston shrimp, caught in the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States. Shrimps were a profitable business, and Mitsui expanded its business to the Gulf of California and bought large quantities of shrimp from Mexican cooperatives at Guaymas. Kyodo's trawlers also used Guaymas as a fishing base and came into conflict with Mitsui. But in February 1937, the two companies launched a US$19, 000 joint venture called the Guaymas Project. The venture failed after half a year when Mitsui withdrew, fearing no future in the importing of shrimp because of strict foreign exchange controls by the Japanese Ministry of Finance.
In September 1937, Nippon Suisan's Mexican office asked the San Francisco office of the soga shosha Mitsubishi Shoji to sell its shrimp and provide financial assistance. Their relationship was good, but with increased sales in the United States, Kyodo, renamed Nippon Suisan in 1937, depended more and more on Mitsubishi for both sales and finances. Mitsubishi gradually left the sales business in the hands of American brokers, while taking a 5% commission but providing insufficient financial support. In July 1940, Nippon Suisan sought to restructure its Los Angeles office to sell directly to American brokers on the West Coast and dismantle the sales system dependent on Mitsubishi. But until September 1940, Mitsubishi continued to control 100% of sales of two fisheries companies, Nippon Suisan and the late-coming Hayashikane Shoten. The trawling of shrimp was prohibited by the Mexican government in September 1940, a move supported by popular nationalist sentiment in Mexico.