Synthetic oil was an essential industry for the war economies of Japan and Germany. When a project of developing a synthetic oil industry was launched in Japan in 1937 under the Seven Year Plan for Promoting the Synthetic Oil Industry, the German synthetic oil industry had already been established, securing a stable domestic market under the Four Year Plan of 1936. Toward the summer of 1939 Krupp started to take orders for its high pressure vessels and other machines from the Japanese Navy, Army and private synthetic oil industries. Krupp, however, failed to obtain to obtain export permissions from German authorities. The conclusion of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940 raised Japanese expectation for increasing economic and technological cooperation between Japan and Germany. Among the most essential areas for cooperation was the transfer of German synthetic-oil technology and related machines to Japan. At the beginning of 1941 in Berlin, Yoshikiyo OSHIMA, a director of Teikoku Nenryo(imperial Fuel), a half state-owned company, made every effort to import high pressure vessels and other machines in cooperation with some affiliates of Japanese trading companies such as Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Okura. Krupp was most eager to make export contracts. The chemical concern I. G. Farben also became interested in exporting German machines, for which I. G. might thereby obtain licence fees. However, Krupp and I. G. failed to cooperate each other. More decisively, the German authorities, especially the Agency for the Four Year Plan, remained opposed to the transaction. They attached more importance to the fulfillment of the Four Year Plan than to the cooperarion with Japan under the Pact. In this way, the expected economic and technological cooperation with Germany bore no fruit in the development of synthetic oil industry in Japan. The Tripartite Pact was an 'ineffective alliance' in economic, technological as well as political sense.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility of development, as well as restrictive conditions, of wealthy farmers' sericulture before World War II. "S" family was a sericultralist as well as a landowner who was the largest in Shimo-Ina District, and one of the largest in the country as a whole. With materials from this family, the paper is concerned chiefly with how changes in labour market conditions affected the sericulture's development and its subsequent decline. Changing agriculture in the interwar period led to an increase in middle acale farms in Kawaji village, Which in turn resulted in the decline of landlordism and also of wealthy farmers whose development had so far been on the employment of cheap labour. However, "S" family managed to keep its landholdings until the 1930s. Its sericulture also developed until the outbreak of World War I by employing cheap labour, but its advance became seriously limited by an increase in wage levels during the war boom which stayed relatively high in the 1920s. In the 1930s, the sericulture declined due to the Great Depression. Judging from this case study, therefore, it seems that one of the restrictive conditions for the advance of wealthy farmers' sericulture was the turbulent change that took place in the labour market caused by heavy industrialization of Japanese capitalism.

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The Osaka-sosan-kaisha, established in 1873 as a commercial firm in Osaka, revealed several problems in the process of its decaying which were contained in Japanese commercialism in itself. The promoters as well as the top managers of this firm were members of KONOIKEYA family, the famous money broker. They could set up nine branch offices in the western parts of Japan, by stirring the commercial ro industrial interests of local merchants. The local merchants, who based their business on the traditional grounds of the han-senbai-sei or on the foundations of rural industries, were competing for hegemony over the growing productive markets that were generated by the deline of feudalism and by the irresistible impulse of producing exports. They asked the Osaka-sosan-kaisha for money and more profitable marketing channel. But the Osaka-sosan-kaisha could not afford their demands, partly for the character of its core capital that, being mostly composed of "hansai", was damaged by "hansai-shobun", partly for lack of commercial experience with which to run firm. Soon they broke off their connection with the Osaka-sosan-kaisha and began to raise funds apart from their central firm-some of them would be succeeded by the commercial bands-and to proceed to foreign trade by their own hands. Some of legal cases concerning their foreign trades drove their central firm into a tight corner. We can find some important problems in the course of rise and fall of the Osaka-sosan-aisha, especially from the point of view of an unsucceeful attempt to modernize the structure of distribution.

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It is generally said that the Qing dynasty abondoned the prohibition policy against marine trade after the Zheng government of Taiwan collapsed. But in my opinion, as far as the rice trade is concerned the state continued the restriction under the name of shutting supply against pirates. That is called Mijin policy. In Fujian they fell short of rice after Mijin policy started. So the state transported the rice of Taiwan to Fujian and took the Pingtiao policy-selling the rice owned by the state at lower price in case of a jump of rice price. But the local governors requested the state to remobe Mijin because the Pingtiao policy was not much effective. The state adopted the Caimai policy-purchase of rice by entrusted private merchants, and permitted free circulation in part. The immediate purpose of Mijin policy was to prevent a jump of rice price in Jiangnan caused by purchase of it by merchants of Fujian. But the true purpose was the control of rice trade under the compulsion of the state. Mijin policy made active the trade between Fujian and Taiwan, and Xiamen prospered as a relay position. But in the late Qing period Taiwan directly traded with Jiangnan much more as the restriction of rice trade became loose, and the trade between Fujian and Taiwan declined. Though Fujian had the circulation of rice broken, Fujian continued to depend upon the Jiangnan market and never formed its own economic circle.

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