This a study of the Manchurian and Shanghai crises, the first serious confrontation between Japan and the world community. The Manchurian crisis was one of the major international crises of the period between World Wars I and II. For Britain and America, it bred a new distrust of Japanese long-term national objectives. It also brought home to all concerned the weaknesses of the League of Nations and the other instruments of collective security which had been devised to deal with problems of the Pacific Ocean area. The first focus of this study is on how one of the international bodies of the time, the League of Nations, attempted to cope with the emergency that broke out in the east in September 1931. The second focus is on the clash of attitudes in Japanese politics. The period covered by the Manchurian crisis was the point when civilian government in Japan was seriously challenged for the first time in the 20th century. The book offers a fresh account of the crisis, making use of new materials, in Japanese and in English, which have become available and which have been drawn upon for this work. These throw new light on the struggles both within Japan and among League enthusiasts to ensure that Japan, the Asian-state which was at once most stable and economically most successful, should not end up in isolation.

This comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of Japanese policy between the two world wars utilizes both English and Japanese sources to present Japan as an independent agent, not a state whose policy was determined by the actions of other countries. Beginning with Japan's disappointment with the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919, Nish examines the roots of Japanese discontent and feelings that ambitions in China were being unreasonably restrained. He explains British and American policies in the region as reactive, but concludes that their responses helped to determine which factions would dominate Japan's political arena. This non-partisan account is even-handed in apportioning responsibility for the events leading to the Second World War. While some Japanese politicians in the 1920s tried to follow the international path, there were others who tended to side with the army in establishing Japan's position, first in Manchuria and later in North and Central China in the 1930s. Conscious of the nation's unpopularity in the western world, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy in the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 and the Tripartite Alliance of 1940. To pursue its own national objectives, Japan joined her allies in making war on the United States and the colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Its forces succeeded in overrunning many colonial territories; and, with a view to easing the problems of occupying them, Japan liberalized its harsh military policies, granting independence to Burma and the Philippines and welcoming Asian leaders to Tokyo for the Greater East Asian Conference of November 1943.

This book, the first full account of Japan’s financial history and the Japanese gold standard in the pivotal years before World War II, provides a new perspective on the global political dynamics of the era by placing Japan, rather than Europe, at the center of the story. Focusing on the fall of liberalism in Japan in late 1931 and the global politics of money that were at the center of the crisis, Mark Metzler asks why successive Japanese governments from 1920 to 1931 carried out policies that deliberately induced deflation and depression. His search for answers stretches from Edo to London to the ragged borderlands of the Japanese empire and from the eighteenth century to the 1950s, integrating political and monetary analysis to shed light on the complex dynamics of money, empire, and global hegemony. His detailed and broad ranging account illuminates a range of issues including Japan’s involvement in the economic dynamics that shook interwar Europe, the character of U.S. isolationism, and the rise of fascism as an international phenomenon.

In this groundbreaking book, leading international economist, Richard Koo argues that far from being the sick man of Asia, Japan is suffering from a temporary but highly unusual economic aberration. Economists and business commentators have always assumed that the majority of companies in any economy are forward looking and are trying to maximize profits. They never considered the possibility that a vast majority of companies may be placing their highest priorities on minimizing debt in order to repair their balance sheets. But that remote possibility has been the reality in Japan for the past decade, and more recently in many other countries including at least a part of the US. Balance Sheet Recession argues that contrary to popular belief, it is this massive shift in corporate behavior, instead of structural problems, that is the root cause of both the deflation and the non-performing loan problems that have troubled Japan for so long. It argues that when the causality runs from the corporate balance sheet problems to deflation and banking problems, a highly unconventional policy response is needed to stabilize the economy. After all, the last time anything similar has happened was the 1930s in the US. Richard Koo's experience in dealing with both the US banking crisis of the early 1980s and the Japanese balance sheet and banking problems of the last ten years makes him unique qualified to comment on this situation. He clearly explains how such a recession can happen in any economy following an asset price bubble, and how best to deal with it.

First published in 1993

An in-depth study of America's widening competition with Japan and Germany--our two most important allies and rivals--and on the critical impact that growing conflicts will have on America's future.