The Japanese maritime shipping industry and the politics behind the enactment of the 1917 Wartime Shipping Regulation Ordinance

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to clarify the impact of World War I on the Japanese maritime shipping industry in terms of the political process. The research to date on that industry during the Taisho era has been conducted mainly within the framework of economic and business history, while aspects such as shipping as a state enterprise and the politics of shipping policy-making have yet to be discussed. Therefore, the author of the present article has chosen to discuss the conflict and cooperation that existed among the government, the political parties and ship owners through an examination of how the October 1917 Emergency Imperial Order for a Wartime Shipping Regulation Ordinance (Senji Senpaku Kanrirei 戦時船舶管理令) was drafted, deliberated and enacted in order to prevent the flight of merchant vessel tonnage abroad.
During the decade of the 1910’s, which was marked by a fledgling attempt by political parties to build constituencies through paying greater attention to regional interests, the Osaka-Kobe (Hanshin) region, the center of the shipping industry at that time, was still a political no man’s land. The Ordinance, which limited the industry from freely doing business in the world market, gave rise to grievance petition movements and bitter criticism of the government by carriers, especially smaller, non-scheduled (shagai 社外) ship owners in the region, all of whom also approached the political parties in order to ease the enactment of the Ordinance. On the other hand, the political parties which took an anti-government stance on the issue welcomed the contributions and support of the ship owners by organizing large party conventions in the region. For example, in its direct dealings with the ship owners, the Seiyukai 政友会 Party moved to obtain a verbal commitment from the Minister of Communications Den Kenjiro concerning the issue of easing regulations.
During the Ordinance’s drafting stages, there was a plan to arbitrarily take over the leadership of the shipping industry administratively by members of the so-called “bureaucrat faction”, including Den and Foreign Diplomacy Commission member Ito Miyoji.
However, in the attempts to obtain ex post facto ratification of the Ordinance during the 40th session of the Imperial Diet, by prior arrangements made by the majority Seiyukai Party, the Ministry of Communications clearly stated in the deliberations that it would ease enactment, thus gutting the Ordinance for all intents and purposes. That is to say, third-country shipping eastward of the Suez Canal, which the Ordinance prohibited, was in effect put on a notification basis, which in fact accelerated the advance of Japanese vessels into India, the South Seas and Australia.
The author concludes that the association between the Kobe-Osaka region ship owners and the Seiyukai, and their resulting intervention in the enactment of the Ordinance, not only frustrated the government's administrative plan, but was also the determining factor in the expansion of maritime routes for Japan’s shipping industry toward the end of the First World War.