Abstract
The purpose of this article is to examine why Japan began to export fish meal (fish guano) rather than import it during the interwar period. Japan imported fish meal in the 1920s, but exported it during the 1930s. There were both domestic and foreign factors behind this. During the 1920s, the domestic factor was the high price of Japanese fish fertilizer, and the foreign factor was the confusion in the German economy following World War I. On the other hand, during the 1930s, the domestic factor was the strong competition between fish oil cake, which was the raw material for fish meal, and other fertilizers (such as bean cake and ammonium sulfate), and the foreign factor was the increase in demand for fish meal in Europe, especially Germany, and the U.S. Most of the fish meal exported from Japan was made of fish cake, which was produced by a traditional method that had been developed in the Edo period (1603〜1867). Only a small amount of fish meal was produced by modern machines. Japan's success in exporting fish meal was achieved through an improvement in the production of traditional fish oil cake.
