産業統制の強化と戦時経済 : 「電力国家管理」への道程 (<特集>両大戦間の社会と経済 : 特にファシズムを中心として)

抄録

In the 1930s the control of industries in Japan was exercised by means of official encouragement of cartel and its regulation as well as direct state control of industries. The former was carried out by the Key Industries Act, and the latter was implemented through direct intervention by government offices. These systems of industries, which were built up to overcome the Showa Financial Crisis, gradually lost their validity according as the market recovered briskness after 1934. The industrial control system which had once been formed with an intention to make use of industries' autonomic regulative force, however, came to be expected to fulfil a function to expand productivity. And the emphasis of industrial control was put more on bureaucratic regulation than on cartel, meanwhile the electric power industry, which, as the main supplier of energy, came to be called the king of all industries, brough about expanison of heavy chemical industries' product. As it became clear that direct state control was superior to autonomic regulation of industries by means of cartel, claims of the group of new bureaucrats who proposed direct and unitary control of the power industry for realization of state policy became stronger and stronger. Then there arose a keen opposition and a hot controversy between a group of reformist bureaucrats who requested the exercise of state control for the purpose of reinforcement of the military force and a group of entrepreneurs in the power industry who were in pursuit of the profit from their own capital. In this debate a bill called Tanomogi Plan was called into being. The plan, which was originated and supported by the Cabinet Research Bureau and a group of reformist bureaucrats, intended to reorganize the power industry in such a way as it would be privately owned but managed by the state. It was brought up for discussion in the Diet and rejected in January 1937 on account of a counter movement by the bourgeoisies. Nevertheless war-time economic structure was developing, and another bill called Nagai Plan which was fundamentally similar to Tanomogi Plan in its purpose except that it provided for pretended private management passed through the Diet in March 1938 in spite of various objections from entrepreneurs in the power industry. The enactment of the Act of State Control of Electric Power together with the National Mobilization Act marked establishment of the system of state control of the power industry in war-time economy.