Japan's Economic Planning and Mobilization in Wartime, 1930s-1940s

'A leading skeptic of the Chalmers Johnson view of Japanese bureaucratic competence confronts the reality of a country mired - after remarkable successes - in an ill-planned, muddled, and unwinnable war. For Professor Miwa's admirers (of which I count myself one), this powerful broadside confirms his sure combination of historical research with critical economic analysis. For doubters, this expos of wartime armaments production offers renewed challenges.' Leslie Hannah, London School of Economics and Political Science

'A brilliant and prolific economist, Professor Yoshiro Miwa explores the Japanese government's efforts to plan the economy in the 1930s and 1940s. If ever any government operated within an institutional structure that would have fostered economic planning, the Japanese government had that structure here: popular support, a compliant legislature, control over the necessary incentives. Notwithstanding that structure, the government's efforts to plan the economy failed disastrously. With incisive analytic tools, Professor Miwa explores the reasons for the failure.' J. Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University, Massachusetts

'... [a] highly detailed evaluation of wartime economic policy and action ... Recommended.' W. D. Kinzley, Choice

Yoshiro Miwa is a Professor of Economics at Osaka Gakuin University, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, where he obtained his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. He writes on a wide variety of areas. Much of his work has been in industrial organization and his current research concerns the effect of government involvement on economic activity in the 1930s and 1940s. Professor Miwa's books include Firms and Industrial Organization in Japan (1996), State Competence and Economic Growth in Japan (2004), and The Fable of the Keiretsu (2006), the latter co-authored by J. Mark Ramseyser.

Introduction; Part I. The Reality of Systematic War Preparations, War Mobilization, and Economic Control: 1. War planning and mobilization during the first-half of the war with China; 2. Operation plan, war plan, and basic national defense policy; Part II. Materials-Mobilization Plans, Production-Capacity-Expansion Plans, and Economic Control: 3. Economic planning and control in wartime Japan: general discussion; 4. Materials-mobilization plans (MMPlans); 5. Production-capacity-expansion plans and policies; 6. PCE Policies in Manchukuo (Manchuria); Part III. The Navy Air Force: Study of a Central Player in the War on the Japanese Side: 7. Preparations; 8. The navy air force during the war with China; 9. The navy air force during the Pacific war; Conclusion.