While it is true that, since the middle of the Tokugawa Period, Japan has had very limited natural resources, this did not always cause severe problems. On the contrary, almost until the end of the nineteenth century Japan was exporting primary products in exchange for manufactured commodities. Moreover, after the opening of the ports in the middle of the nineteenth century, the improvement in the terms of trade even brought substantial benefits. As industrialization proceeded, Japan became an exporter of light manufactures in exchange for raw materials and food. It was only after 1931, however, when it launched a campaign of military expansion to cure a "presumed" shortage of natural resources that it started to suffer from "real" shortages. Mi1itary expansion caused the rapid expansion of heavy industries. The vast increase in imports of raw materials and fuels needed by such industries and by the military, caused a deterioration in the terms of trade. In addition the shift of the industrial structure from labor-intensive light industries to capital-intensive heavy industries in the l930s induced a fall in real wages and in the standard of living of ordinary people.

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The traditional financial systems of Piao-hao (票号), Yin-hao (銀号) and Quan-zhuang (銭荘) had a dominant position in the internal financial markets of premodern China. Piao-hao managed by Shansi-bang (山西幇), which were banks of the old style, controlled the market of government financing, and therefore were not a suitable financial mechanism for an industrial society. The first attempt at monetary reform in modern China was made immediately after the Sino-Japanese War. On 19 July 1895, the Emperor Guang-xu (光緒) ordered all provincial governors and generals to submit their plans for reform of the national finance system within one month. Before then, there was no idea of depositing the national income in a central bank. Weng Tong-hu (翁同和) and Wang Wen-shao (王文韶), gave concrete support to the plan for establishing a quasi-central bank proposed by Zhang Xuan-hai (盛宣懐). Zhang was strongly opposed to any plan to start a national central bank. He proposed opening a special bank based on private capital which could be made to act as a quasi-central bank. On 7 December 1896, the Emperor Guang-xu accepted Zhang Xuan-hai's plan for a Chinese bank and recognised its right to issue silver coin. The bank, whose Chinese name was Zhongguo-tongshang-yinhang (中国通商銀行 the Chinese Imperial Bank), issued bank notes from 1898. The small-value notes for Five and Ten yuan (元) were in strong demand in the Shanghai market and over one million lian (両) were issued each year after 1905. After 1905, the local banks established by every Shen (省) govenment in mainland China and the Chinese Imperial bank in Shanghai began to play an important role in the money supply system. By contrast, Piao-hao managed by Shansi-bang lost a large share in the market of government financing.

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After the First World War, Germany faced an enormous housing shortage. The Weimar Republic, which clearly declared itself to be a social welfare state (Sozialstaat) in the constitution of 1919, adopted a housing policy characterized by systematic state intervention in order to adjust social inequalities in the free housing market. The state intervention at that time consisted of two components: economic intervention to promote "social house building" (Sozialwohnungsbau) for lower income groups, social intervention which aimed at solving conflicts between tenants and landlords, mainly to the advantage of tenants. The economic power of house owners had been excessively strengthened by the housing shortage, leading to high rents, and then fears of a catastrophe in the housing markets which might destabilize the new political order. The Republic, therefore, urgently needed to introduce a system of social intervention restricting the legal right of house owners to dispose of their property. But this attempt caused unrest itself, particularly amouag house owners, and they started a protest movement. The movement joined forces with the antirepublican movement of the petit bourgeoisie (Mittelstand), and developed into an increasing political burden for the Republic, which had to pay "social costs" for the establishment of the social welfare state. The law for legal regulation of housing rents in 1922 represented the core of the social intervention policy outlined above, and also served as the focus of the related conflicts in society and their social costs. This paper attempts to analyze the social and political dimensions of the new rent regulation system with special reference to the possibilities and limitations of the Weimar Repubic as a social welfare state.

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