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In Memoriam Ernest Francis Penrose by Edith Penrose

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In Memoriam Ernest Francis Penrose by Edith Penrose JAPAN AND WORLD DEPRESSION E. F. Penrose (1895-1984) JAPAN AND WORLD DEPRESSION Then and Now Essays in Memory of E. F. Penrose Edited by Ronald Dore and Radha Sinha with assistance from Mari Sako Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-07522-5 ISBN 978-1-349-07520-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-07520-1 ©Ronald Dore and Radha Sinha 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-37497-9 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly & Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1987 ISBN 978-0-312-44054-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Main entry under title: Japan and world depression. Includes index. Contents: Introduction I Ronald Dore and Radha Sinha­ Memoirs of Japan, 1925-301E. F. Penrose- Depression and protection I Michael French and Thomas Wilson- [etc.] 1. Japan- Economic conditions- 1918-1945- Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Japan- Economic conditions- 1945- -Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Business cycles- Japan- Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Japan- Foreign economic relations- Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Penrose, E. F. (Ernest Francis), 1895-1984. I. Penrose, E. F. (Ernest Francis), 1895-1984. II. Dore, Ronald Philip. III. Sinha, Radha. IV. Sako, Mari. HC462.8.J378 1987 330.952'033 85-26158 ISBN 978-0-312-44054-1 Dedicated to the memory of Ernest Penrose for his devotion to scholarship, to Japan and to world peace Contents frontispiece: E. F. Penrose List of Tables ix Preface Xl In Memoriam: Ernest Francis Penrose by Edith Penrose xiii E. F. Penrose: the Record XVII Glossary xxii Notes on the Contributors xxiii 1 Introduction Ronald Dore and Radha Sinha 2 Memoirs of Japan, 1925-30 6 E. F. Penrose 3 Depression and Protection: the Early Thirties and the Early Eighties Compared 14 Michael French and Thomas Wilson 4 Japan and Two World Economic Depressions 32 Martin Bronfenbrenner 5 The Japanese Economy in the Interwar Period: a Brief Summary 52 Takafusa Nakamura 6 Depressions in Japan: the 1930s and the 1970s 68 Tuvia Blumenthal 7 How Fragile a Super State? 83 Ronald Dore VII viii Contents 8 Japanese Public Opinion and Policies on Security and Defence 111 J. A. A. Stockwin 9 Britain's View of the Japanese Economy in the Early Sh6wa Period 135 Ian Nish 10 Soviet-Japanese Relations, Past and Present 149 Alec Nove 11 Japan's Economic Experience in China before the Establishment of the People's Republic of China: a Retrospective Balance-sheet 155 Christopher Howe 12 Variations on a Pan-Asianist Theme: the 'Special Relationship' between Japan and Thailand 178 Jean-Pierre Lehmann N arne Index 206 List of Tables 3.1 Rate of change of real National Product and industrial production 16 3.2 Rate of change of real GOP and value-added in industry, 1973-81 18 3.3 Percentage unemployed 19 3.4 Unemployment as percentage of total labour force 20 3.5 Annual changes in prices and wages 22 3.6 Annual rate of change in prices, 1973-82 23 3.7 Annual rate of change in hourly earnings in manufacturing, 1973-81 24 3.8 World production and trade: annual rate of change in volume 30 4.1 Agricultural stagnation in prewar Japan: occupational distribution of employment 34 4.2 Agricultural stagnation in prewar Japan: number of farms 34 4.3 Replacement of raw silk by textiles in export trade in prewar Japan 34 4.4 Progress of heavy industrialisation in prewar Japan: percentage of factory employment in manufacturing industries 35 5.1 Wholesale and consumer price indices for the leading countries 53 5.2 Long-term wholesale price trends in Japan and the UK 55 5.3 Japanese economic indicators in the interwar period 60 5.4 Economic indices for the leading countries 63 6.1 Japan: major indicators, 1930s and 1970s 70 6.2 Composition of GOP in constant prices 73 6.3 Year-to-year changes in components of GOP in constant prices 73 6.4 Contribution to GOP growth rate 75 8.1 Public Opinion Polls: 'Should the Constitution be revised?' 114 ix x List of Tables 8.2 Public Opinion Polls on the Self-Defence Forces 116 8.3 Public Opinion Polls on nuclear weapons 120 8.4 Public Opinion Polls based on the three non-nuclear principles 122 8.5 Public Opinion Polls on 'introduction' of nuclear weapons 123 8.6 Public Opinion Poll on fear of nuclear war 124 8.7 Public Opinion Polls on national security policy 124 8.8 Public Opinion Polls on consciousness offoreign threat 126 8.9 Public Opinion Polls on patriotism 127 8.10 Public Opinion Polls on contemporary defence issues 129 10.1 Soviet trade with Japan 151 10.2 Principal Soviet exports and imports 152 11.1 Trends in key economic indicators, 1900-30 159 11.2 Gross Domestic Product in Manchuria, 1929-41 161 11.3 Cultivated area as percentage of potential cultivated area, 1887-1940 167 Preface Ernest Penrose was the source of this book in two senses. First and foremost, we wanted to do something to honour a man of whom we were fond and for whose distinguished career we had respect. He was, as it were, a prototype of the new twentieth-century version of international man: a linerport professor before airport professors were ever heard of. Secure in, certainly never relinquishing, his Cornish identity, he moved from Japan to the USA to Switzerland to Britain to Iraq to France, absorbing elements of each culture as he went, finding fascination in, feeling rapport with, each one of them. And always, the work which took him from place to place was informed by a belief in the possibility that rational enquiry, the honest clarification of alternatives, the evaluation of those alternatives by explicit criteria, the laying bare of the causes of things, could improve the human lot, and could, notably, improve the chances of peace between nations. Whether he was looking at the implications of the population/food balance in Japan, examining charges of 'social dumping' in textiles, examining plans for a postwar international economic order as adviser to Ambassador John Winant, helping to set up the International Refugee Organisation with Mrs Roosevelt or, in Paris and in London in later years, writing about the power balance in the Middle East, he brought together just that mix of abilities and motives which makes the best kind of 'concerned academic' - fascination with the intellectual problem of sorting out effects and causes combined with a consciousness that cleverness for cleverness' sake was out of place in issues which affected human lives; awareness of relativities, of how the world looks from different points of view, combined with the belief that there is an objective reality and that one always has to try to see it straight and see it whole. It was as a model of decency in the application of intellect to conflicts of power and interest that we wished to salute him, and our wish to salute him was the origin of this book. 'Then and now' chats with him at Fontainebleau were more directly the inspiration of the book's theme. Japan's climb out of the Depression had been the subject of two of his early articles in the xi xii Preface Swedish journal Index, and its wider implications for his book on population policies. The connection between Japan's economic problems - the ineluctable problems of a weak country trying to raise itself out of poverty and using international trade as a key instrument, the vulnerability to the world economic climate which this implied, and the inexorable slide towards repression at home and military expansion abroad - was the theme which had preoccupied him in the thirties, to the memory of which he frequently returned. 'Can it happen again?' is often an absurd question to ask of history, but 'Could the factors which made it happen then still be operating now?' never is. We are very grateful to our colleagues who responded to the theme with their contributions for proving the point once again, as well as for numerous fascinating illustrations of 'the ironies of history' . We had hoped to make the volume a birthday present. In Japan and China Festschriften are seen to be appropriate in one's 60th, 70th and 88th year. The last was particularly appropriate for the original compiler of the 'Nagoya indexes' with its foundation in the rice crop series, since it is known as the rice celebration - 88 being a pun on the ideograph for rice. Alas, we missed it, and a birthday gift has perforce been transformed into a memorial, a commemoration of a distinguished and worthwhile life. May we finally record our thanks to all those who have contributed to the making, the editing and the typing of the book: Anne Carey, Edith and Perran Penrose, Kate Livingstone, Mari Sako and Maria Spoors. Technical Change Centre, London R.D. University of Glasgow R.S. In Memoriam Ernest Francis Penrose by Edith Penrose Professor Penrose - Pen -lived and worked in Nagoya between 1925 and 1930. During this period he made major contributions which are still remembered with respect in Japan today. This volume was originally conceived to honour his 88th birthday with a collection of essays on the political economy of the country in which he began his life's work: sadly he did not live to enter his ninth decade and this collection has become a memorial collection. Pen's life, though, covered an extraordinarily wide range of activities.
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