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Japanese Zaibatsu Primarily the United States, Great Britain, and the the Conclusion of Japan's Disastrous War Against the Netherlands

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Japanese Zaibatsu Primarily the United States, Great Britain, and the the Conclusion of Japan's Disastrous War Against the Netherlands <.;opynghted Matenal 300 Japanese Zaibatsu primarily the United States, Great Britain, and the the conclusion of Japan's disastrous war against the Netherlands. West, none of these east Asian leaders or their suc­ A year after the opening of hostilities with the cessors-nor any leaders from th.e former colonial West, the Greater East Asia Ministry (Dai TO'A Sh6) overlord state japan-have been able to organize a (GEAM) was formed by the Japanese government in bloc or coalition of east Asian states with anything November 1942 during Army general T6j6 Hideki's approaching the intimacy of cooperation and coor­ first cabinet as prime minister. During TQj(Ys ten .. dination of goals once envisioned for GEACS. This ure, the Army-dominated GEAM maintained some ""II likely remain the case as long as the concept of 100,000 officials dispatched overseas for the coordi­ an east Asian bloc remains haunted, so to speak, by nation of japanese political, ideological/cultural, and the ghosts of japan's former dreams of imperial glory. economic policy in GEACS. This management of this overseas activity was divided into three separate M.G. Shcftall GEAM bureaus, one each for Manchurian, Chinese, :Shizuoka University and ,.(Southern .. affairs, respectively, the last bureau overseeing the administration of Japanese territorial See Also: Economies. New; Globalization; Japanese holdings and strategic economic interests in south­ Zaibatsu; World War U. east Asia, the East Indies, and the western Pacific. Further Readings Downfall and Legacy Dowet J, \Y/. \Var \~thout Mercy: Race- and Power in the The Greater East Asia Conference (Dai To'A Kaigi) Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986. held in Tokyo in November 1943 and attended by Lebra, ). C., ed.}apan~ Great~r East Asia Co-Prosperity leaders from member states (including Manchukuo, Sphere In World War II: Selected Readings rmd the Na1U<ing-based Nationalist Chinese government, Documents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Burma, the Philippines, Thailand, and "free" India) Office of Strategic Services Research and Analysis Branch. was in some ways the last gasp of the idealistic pre­ "ll>e Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity SJ>hcre (Current tenses of the GEACS concept, which had been taking Intelligence Study Number 35). R& A 33378, August a battering since the tide of the war turned inexorably 10, 1945:· http://www.foia.cia.gov/ browse_docsJ ull against japan from mid-1942. After the fall of the Tojo .asp (Accessed August 25, 2010). cabinet following the U.S. capture of Saipan in june Oguma, E. A Genealogy o/"}t~ptmese" Self/mag~. David 1944, the GEACS concept was for all intents and pur­ Askew, tra.ns. Melbourne, Aust ral ia~ Trans Paci.fic poses finished. Press, 19%. After the formation of the cabinet of Prime Minis­ Young, L. japan:( Total Empire: iWanclr.uria and the ter Koiso Kuniaki, GEAM's ke)' responsibilities were Culture ofWartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University subsumed under th e aegis of the newly reinvigorated of California Press, 1999. Foreign Ministry, while the day-to-day administra­ tion o f the e mpi ~·e's remaining far· fl ung colo nial holdings and key oveeseas economic interests came under the direct management of the Japanese mili­ Japanese Zaibatsu tary and Japanese business corporations for the rest of the war. GEAM was dissolved by order of Allied Zaibats11 is a Japanese term that r-efers to industrial Occupation authorities soon after japan's surrender and financial business companies that developed in in August I 945. Japan from the rnid-JSOOs into the mid-J9(J()s. Zai­ Many important fu ture leaders of east Asia- par­ batsu were large fa mily-controlled vertical monopo· ticularly during tlhe regional transition period of lies consisting of a holding company, a wholly owned postwar European decolonization in the 1950s and banking subsidiary providing finance, and intercon­ !960s- had originally been groomed under wartime nected industrial subsidiaries do minating specific japanese colonial administration and ideologically sectors of a market, either as stand.. alone companies influenced by japan's GEACS vision. However, since or through a number of subsubsidiaries. The size Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material Japanese Zaibatsu 301 and infl uence of these companies allowed for signifi­ ness conglomeration and the granting of military cant control over segments of the Japanese economy. contracts. The more famo us second-tier zaibatsu However, the zaibatsu were widely condemned by the included Okura, Furukawa, and Nakajima groups, late 1930s as being elements of Western excess in jap­ diffe ring from the traditional zaibatsu in that spe­ anese society, a corrupting influence on japan's par­ cific families did not control them. liamentary system. and highly profit-oriented organi­ After World War II and the surrender of japan, an zations disloyal to japan's imperialistic future. attempt was made to dismantle the zaibatsu. Ameri.. can economic advisers to presidents Franklin Roos­ History and Significance of the Zaibatsu evelt and Hal'ry Truman were highly suspicious of From the Jate 1900s onward, the zaibatsu were instru­ monopolies and restrictive business practices, which mental in economic and industrial activity within they felt to be both inefficient and a form of corporat­ japan. Zaibatsu groups were made up of a central ism. During the occupatiO!\ 16 zaibatsu were targeted holding company, owned by a controlling family, for complete dissolution, and 26 more for reorganiza­ which held the stocks of major affilia tes. While this tion. In 1946, the conb·olling zaibatsu families' assets style of pyramid control was common in the West, were seized. holding companies were eliminated, and what made the zaibatsu unique was that they held a interlocking directorships. necessary to the old system minority interest in affiliated members and controlled of intercompany coordination, were outlawed. them through other techniques. Dependence on bank­ Ne,•ertheless. complete termination of the zaibatsu ing, shipping, and trading facilities of the combine was was never achieved, most!~· because the U.S. govern­ one of these techniques, but more important was the ment reversed course in an effort to reindustrialize personal loyalty of the executives to all the firms of Japan, as a bulwark against Communism from o ther the group. The fou r largest 7-aibatsu had direct control parts of Asia. The zaibatsu were in this case consid­ over more than 30 percent of)apan's mining. chemical, ered to be beneficial to the Japanese economy and and metals industries; almost 50 percent control over government. The opinions of the Japanese public, the machiner)' and equipment market; 60 percent of however, ranged from indifferent to disapproving. the commercial stock exchange; as well as a significant portion of the export merchant fleet. The Present-Day Influence of Zaibatsu Considered monopolistic, the business practices The original zaibatsu system has not survived to the of the zaibatsu resulted in closed circles of compa­ present day. However, the renu>ants of zaibatsu in nies, until japanese indumial expansion on the Asian the form of financial groups, institutions, and larger mainland began in the 1930s. ~l owever, some Japanese companies are still extant. Some businesses, whose politicians viewed zaibatSu with misgivings as they origins are linked to the original zaibatsu, even retain were said to have too much influence on both Japanese the original family names, for example, Mitsubishi, national and foreign policies. for example, the Rikken Mitsui. and Sumitomo. Nonetheless. some argue that Seiyukai political party was regarded as a branch of the old zaibatsu mechanisms of vertical economic and the Mitsui 7-aibatsu, which also had ties to the Imperial admio\istrative conb·ol ha,,e been replaced by hori­ japanese Army. Another criticism of the zaibatsu was zontal business relationships known today as keiretstt, that while tl>e rest of tl>e world was in the midst of a meaning "series" or ''subsidiary." worldwide economic depression, they were prosper­ i• •g l1u·ouol• t.:urrt~rn;y ~v~~.:ulati u•• , •••ai••tt::rtcu 11.,:t.: u(luw Jennifer Beamer labor costs, and military procurement. University ofAlberta The four biggest zaibatsu were Mitsubishi, Mit­ sui, Sumitomo, and Yasuda. Two of them, Mitsui See Also: Econo1nies, New; Japanese Co-Prosperity and Sumitomo, had origins in the Edo period (1603- Sphere; World War ll. 1868) while Mitsubishi and Yasuda trace their fo un­ dations to the Meiji Restoration (1868). After the Further Readings Russo- Japanese War (1904-05), "second-tier· or EcclestOJl, Bernard. State and Society in PQst- \Var }tlpan. · new· zaibatsu also emerged, resulting from busi- Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Copyrighted Material .
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