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Unlock This CourseIn October 1929 share prices crashed in the United States. Banks and firms failed, and Americans stopped buying luxuries. This began the world Depression, a worldwide fall in trade, prices and jobs. Japan was hit quickly because it depended on selling goods abroad.
The key product was raw silk. Silk thread was Japan's biggest export, and the United States bought most of it. When American buyers disappeared, silk exports collapsed and the price of raw silk fell sharply. Japan's total exports nearly halved in two years.
Japan's government made things worse. In January 1930 the finance minister, Inoue Junnosuke, returned Japan to the gold standard, a system in which a currency can be swapped for a fixed amount of gold. He hoped it would build confidence and force firms to become more efficient. But he chose a high value for the yen, which made Japanese goods dearer abroad just when the world was buying less. Prices at home fell too. The years that followed became known as the "Showa Depression".
Key terms:
Falling prices cut profits. Firms cut wages, closed factories or ran them for fewer hours. Textile mills, which relied on silk and cotton exports, were hit hard. Disputes over wage cuts increased. The big zaibatsu survived and could buy up weaker rivals, but many small firms went under.
Unemployment rose sharply. Estimates varied widely, from hundreds of thousands in official figures to as many as three million, but all agree it was very high. Japan had no proper system of unemployment pay. Many jobless workers went back to the villages they had left, hoping their families would feed them.
The countryside suffered most. Millions of farm families earned extra money by raising silkworms, so when the silk price fell, family income fell with it. Then rice prices dropped too, after a very large harvest in 1930. Farmers had to pay rent and repay debts out of smaller incomes. Workers laid off in the cities came home, and there were more mouths to feed.
In 1931 cold weather ruined the harvest in the north-east, and families there went hungry. There were reports of children going to school without lunch, and of poor families selling daughters to work in distant towns. Newspapers reported the hardship widely. Many people felt that the government in Tokyo cared more about banks and big firms than about ordinary farmers.
Since 1925 the two main parties had taken turns to govern, with the vote for all men over 25. They had promised growth. Now they seemed to have failed. Voters had already seen bank failures, and the parties were widely thought to be corrupt and tied to rich business backers.
Big business lost respect too. In 1931 it became known that the Mitsui group had bought huge amounts of dollars, expecting Japan to leave the gold standard, and had made large profits while ordinary people suffered. Japan did leave gold in December 1931. A weaker yen helped exports and brought a recovery, but it was too late to restore trust. Young army officers and nationalists blamed "selfish" politicians and zaibatsu for Japan's troubles. Their anger is the story of the lesson called "The Return to Military Dictatorship in the 1930s".
Change: Men over 25 won the vote in 1925. Trade unions and tenant farmers' unions grew, and the state answered with the Public Security Preservation Law. The wartime boom turned into the slump, the Great Kanto Earthquake and the bank crisis of 1927, then the world Depression.
Continuity: Japan still relied on silk exports and on a countryside that stayed poor. The zaibatsu stayed powerful. And each crisis, from the earthquake to the Depression, made it harder for party politicians to keep public support.
How significant was the world Depression in weakening trust in party government in Japan in the years 1919-31? [16 marks]
You may use the following in your answer:
You must also use information of your own.
The world Depression was very significant in weakening trust in party government, but it was the last blow in a longer decline, not the only cause.
Before 1929, trust was already being tested. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 destroyed much of Tokyo and Yokohama, and the cost of rebuilding left the government and banks short of money. In 1927 a bank crisis forced the prime minister, Wakatsuki, to resign. Voters saw politicians as unable to protect the economy, and the parties were also thought to be corrupt. Japan's economy was therefore weak, and still reliant on silk, before the Depression even began.
The Depression made this far worse. When the American market vanished, silk exports collapsed and the price of raw silk fell sharply. Millions of farm families lost the extra income from silkworms, and rice prices fell as well. Unemployment rose in the cities, and jobless workers returned to villages that could not feed them. In 1931 a poor harvest in the north-east brought real hunger. Because the government had returned Japan to the gold standard in 1930, many people blamed it for making a world crisis worse. The Mitsui dollar-buying scandal in 1931 seemed to show that big business cared more about profit than about the poor.
However, the Depression was not the only factor. Earlier political conflicts mattered too. The Public Security Preservation Law of 1925 showed that the ruling class feared the growing labour movement, and the parties had not solved the problems of the farmers or the workers. The army and nationalists were ready to use any crisis against party politicians.
Overall, the Depression was the most significant single factor, because it brought hardship to millions and turned long-standing doubts into open anger, and the Mitsui scandal made it personal. The criteria I am using are the scale of the hardship and the speed with which it damaged trust. Since 1925 every man over 25 had a vote, so millions of angry voters could now turn against the parties. But without the earlier weaknesses of the 1920s it might not have destroyed trust so quickly.
What lifts this to the top level: it covers the earthquake, the Depression and the earlier 1920s conflicts, weighs them against each other, and reaches a justified judgement.
On a "how significant" question, do not stop at the two bullets. Add a third point from your own knowledge, then say which mattered most and why.