The Impact of the Absence of Industrial Cooperatives: Background to the Emigration to Manchuria

The economic turmoil in the interwar period triggered social turmoil in Japan. This manifested itself in an attempted coup d’état and a number of political assassinations in Japan, leading to the Manchurian Incident in 1931, and eventually to the Pacific War. In the midst of this process, Japanese government established a national policy of emigration to Manchuria which saw some 270,000 people migrate to Manchuria, only to meet a tragic end. Many studies about Japanese emigration to Manchuria have been written acknowledging that rural impoverishment was an important background to and consideration of the central government in its policy planning. Emigration is not something that can be explained by policy measures or the political environment alone. The conditions that confronted those who actually became emigrants should also be considered. However, this chapter, like preceding studies, questions the assumption that poverty automatically leads to emigration. Considering poverty as the push and various policies as the pull factors behind emigration, it would follow that all areas across Nagano Prefecture would send out emigrants to Manchuria. This chapter examines the effects of new economic organizations, such as cooperatives and their financial networks on emigration policy with the case of Seinaiji village in Nagano prefecture, which didn’t have it until the late 1930s and sent huge numbers of emigrants to Manchuria.