The Significance and the Limit in the Development of Agricultural Co-operatives in the 1920's

Abstract

Under Japanese fascism, sangyo-kumiais (agricultural co-operatives) controlled the household and the management of the peasantry. They became indispensable institution for the implimentation of the agricultural policy of the state in wartime. In order to make clear the causes which urged the rapid development of this institution, it might be important to analyse the tention between the managenial aspect of this sangyo-kumiai and its political function which meant to harmonize the interest of landowners and that of peasants. In the 1920's agrarian disputes over the landowner-peasant rerationsbip had spread all over Japan. The government used police force to suppress the peasant movement to prevent their bringning political unstability, while planning to improve the deteriorating economic conditions of the peasantry. Thus sangyo-kumiais were encoraged and given aids by government officials, whose policy strongly reflected the interest of landowners. With sangyo-kumiai, officials intended to bring small profit to peasant members. However, the weak managerial and financial position of small and poor peasant members, for whose economic stability this institution was encouraged publicly, brought managerial and financial difficulties to sangyo-kumiais. By the way, Japanese imperialism did not have the ability to harmonize the two classes (landowners and peasantry) by spending policy or easy finance for peasantry. So each sangyo-kumiai, whose membership covered the peasants and landowners in a village, was obliged to expand by itself without much financial help of the state. Although this applies in the 1930's typically, in the 1920's too it did cleary. After 1933, when "sangyo-kumiai expansion movement" started, two types of policy to relieve peasants economy were pursued. One is the policy of financing low interest money suuplied by landowners to sangyo-kumiai, the other being the policy of making the household of peasantry more frugal. This policy was pursued too in the 1920's at the area where peasantry movement was fiercely fought. In the 1930's such policy spread all over Japan and was thoroughly pursued. Therefore, the agrarian policy pursued by Japanese fascism originated in the 1920's. Now, the policy intended to protect the interest of landowners through suppressing agrarian disputes. However, it led landowners to bear much expence snch as making them finance sangyo-kumiais. Thus the agrarian policy, served monopoly capitalism, was being strengthened after the 1920's.