Firms and Industrial Association in the Period of the Second World War and the Postwar Economic Recovery

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In this project, we gathered original documents of the semi-public organizations which had played the central role in the economic control during the Second World War and were closed by the occupation authorities (SCAP) after the War, as well as the related documents of the government and private companies. The archives and institutions where we visited include Tsukuba Annex of the National Archives of Japan, the National Institute for Defense Studies, the Japan Society for Promotion of Machine Industry, Oita University and Kyushu University.Then, using those documents, we investigated the reorganization of the economy during the war and the economic recovery from the war damage. In particular, from the documents of the National Revitalization Finance Corporation, it was made clear that the wartime policy aiming at reorganization of medium and small-sized firms gave serious damages to the people who had worked for those firms, and that in reorganizing the distribution system, the local governments and the industrial associations played a major role.The results of the project were published in a book, Reorganization of the Economy in Wartime Japan edited by Akira Hara and Shiro Yamazaki. At the same time, in order to consider the postwar economic recovery of Japan in comparative perspectives, we held a series of international conferences with Korean universities, namely Seoul National National University, Pusan National University, Kangnung National University and Ewha Womans University. The papers presented at these conferences were reported in a volume, Comparative. Study on the Postwar Economic Development in East Asia. For convenience of other researchers, we published a series of volumes which reprinted the original documents newly found in this project.