Characteristic Features of "Industrialization" of the Japanese Colonies in the 1930's

Abstract

This paper has tried to trace the entire process of rise and fall of military economic structure of the Japanese Imperialism during the War of Fifteen Years starting with the Sino-Japanese War and ending with the World War II, focusing on the development of "Industrialization" policy extended over the entire colonies. As is widely known, Japanese Imperialism started to establish extensive military industry in the colonies as a part of the Military Industry Expansion Program in the late 1930's. This paper, locating the Program in the overall policy of the Japanese Imperialism including financing and labor, has studied how heavy industry could be established in the colonies. For this purpose, the process of invasion by the Japanese Imperialism was divided into three phases: the first phase from the Manchurian Incident to the Sino-Japanese War, the second phase from the Sino-Japanese War to the start of the World War II, and the third phase during the World War II. While defining the characteristic features of each phase, this paper has studied how the colonial economics as a whole headed for a collapse in the course of a downfall of the Japanese military industry triggered by the cessation of trading with the United States and the United Kingdom.