The Characteristics of Plant Location Policies in Japan during the War against China 1937-1941

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make clear the characteristics of plant location policies in Japan during the war against China. More specifically, it is concerned with the role of land control and land-use planning in the placement of private munition plants. This approach permits a careful inquiry into the character of land policy in Japan, and how it differed from those implemented by Nazi Germany. In the latter half of the 1930s, the policy of the central government was to entrust local public entities with plant location policies. The central government instructed prefectures to develop the necessary infrastructure for private munition plants and assisted them with reforms of the local government system through fundings programs. Accordingly we analyzed the policies of local public entity, that of Shizuoka Prefecture. The Shizuoka administration absorbed the demands for infrastructure voiced by private enterprises implemented them smoothly. Attempts by members of the fishing industry to oppose these land-use polices were disucussed in the Prefectural Assembly, but no consensus was reached. Plant location policies in the latter half of the 1930s were not the result of plans developed by planning specialists. Rather, they reflected the prefectural administration's attempt to incorporate the demands of the central government and private enterprises. However these policies both reduced farm acreage, and led to the concentration of munition plants. As a consequence of this, the central government began to enforce land-use controls and plans in earnest in the 1940s. However, it was difficult to prevent local public entities from encouraging the building of factories and it was hard to keep private developers from buying up farmland. In fact farmlands was transformed into plant sites. Farmers' resistances arising from the unplanned land-use were eliminated by the military, and the plant location policies of the local public entities continued to function throughout early in the 1940s.