抄録
The purpose of this paper is to make clear the actual conditions of the financing for electric power companies from Mitsui Bank before World War II and to consider the relation between Zaibatus and electric power capital. In the prewar Japanese industrial structure, the electric power industry leading the development of heavy and chemical industries was one of the most important sections. Besides, the electric power industry had raised the grdeatest social funds among all industrial sections. The study to analyse the mechanism of raising funds of the electric power industry is, therefore, important in the analysis of prewar Japanese capitalism. In this paper, financial relations between six big financial groups, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda, Dai Ichi and the Industrial Bank of Japan, and electric power capital is firstly examined. Secondly the financing for electric power companies from the Mitsui Bank is precisely discussed. The objects of those are holding stocks, holding corporate bonds, underwriting corporate bonds, being entrusted with mortgages of corporate bonds and loans. The conclusion of these examinations are followings: Financial organs affiliated to Zaibatsu contributed greatly toward raising funds of electric power companies by means of external liabilities such as bonds and loans. Therefore, electric power companies had been depending upon Zaibatsu financially since the middle of the 1920s; because bonds were more important means of raising funds than stocks in the electric power industry during the latter half of 1920s and 1930s. However the commonly accepted theory is not adequate, which asserts that electric power capital was put under the control of Zaibatsu. For example, the Mitsui Bank had never intervened in Toho Electric Power Co., although the financial of the two was tightly close. Due to the decrease of the balance of loans and the spread of underwriting syndicates, individual relation between each financial organ affiliated to Zaibatsu and each electric power company was rarefied on and after 1934.
