第一次大戦期における植民地銀行体系の再編成 : 朝鮮銀行の「満洲」進出を中心に

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The purpose of this article is to analyze the Bank of Chosen (Korea)'s intrusion into "Manchuria" (Northeast China) during the First World War, and thereby to shed light on the characteristics of the overseas expansion of Japanese imperialism at the time. During the First World War, there were two conditions at work behind Japanese expansion into China. First, the great powers of the West temporarily retreated from East Asia. Second, Japan was able to earn surpluses in its balance of payments because of a rapid economic development. Taking advantage of these conditions, the Terauchi cabinet (October 1916-September 1918) pursued policies of invasion into China. The Terauchi cabinet carried out its policies toward China in two steps. The policies of the first stage were aimed at turning Manchuria into an integral part of the Japanese empire like Korea. Employed as two major vehicles for attaining this goal were the banking and railway systems. The policies of the second stage were aimed at integrating not only Manchuria but China "proper" as well into the Japanese empire, and thereby turning the empire into a self-sufficient economic bloc. In order to realize this plan, loans (usually known as the Nishihara loans) were extended to Tuan Ch'i-jui. In implementing the policies of these two stages, the Bank of Chosen was assigned a crucially important role. First, in Manchuria, the Bank of Chosen was designated as the central bank for the colony replacing the Yokohama Specie Bank which had been the issue bank there. Adoption of this measure meant that Japan decided to unify that portion of the monetary system in Manchuria under Japanese control on basis of the gold notes. Furthermore, the Bank of Chosen offered loans to the Manchurian provincial government which was then facing a financial difficulty, and tried to place the financial affairs of Manchuria under its control. In the offering of the Nishihara loans to Tuan Ch'i-jui, it was also the Bank of Chosen that played a leading part. One of the important purposes of the loans was to establish a gold standard system in China and to link that system to the Japanese monetary system. In other words, the loans were meant to serve as a means for consolidating a prototype of the "Yen Bloc" to be formed later in the 1930s. To begin with, the Bank of Chosen tried to circulate its own gold notes in Manchuria so as to bring Manchuria into the sphere of its own currency circulation, that is to say, into the sphere of the Yen currency circulation. Subsequently, the Bank of Chosen further attempted to integrate the whole of China into the Yen currency sphere. Following the expansion of the Bank of Chosen into Manchuria, the whole Japanese colonial banking system consisting of the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Bank of Taiwan, the Bank of Chosen itself, etc. was reorganized. Through this reorganization process, the colonial financial facilities were strengthened and readjusted to accelerate further expansion of the Yen currency sphere. Nevertheless, the Terauchi cabinet's policies in China ended as a total failure. Although the Nishihara loans were meant to reform the Chinese monetary system to base itself on gold standard, gold notes were never issued there. This was due to the fact that as the First World War drew to its end, the Nishihara loans encountered increasingly severe criticisms both inside Japan and abroad. Not only that, Japan even failed to unify the Manchurian monetary system on the basis of gold standard. Manchuria originally belonged to the Chinese silver currency sphere. According to a plan devised after the Russo-Japanese War on the basis of this fact, the Yokohama Specie Bank was supposed to unify the Manchurian monetary system on the basis of silver standard. This scheme, however, was not put into effect due to the following two factors: 1) on the part of the Japanese banking institutions there emerged a conflict over the choice between the gold and silver standards; and 2) on the Chinese side, a new bank system was established as a defensive measure. Ever since the failure of this original plan, Japan had continued to circulate both gold and silver notes simultaneously without any clearly defined policy. Thus, the Bank of Chosen's adoption during the First World War of a policy to unify the Manchurian monetary system on the basis of gold standard signified that Japan had reached a new stage in its economic intrusion into Manchuria. Nevertheless, this new policy turned out a failure due to the following two reasons. One reason was that the Bank of Chosen lent too excessively both in Japan and Manchuria, thus forcing itself into serious managerial difficulties. The other reason was that Japan's policy on the use of gold standard as the basis for unification of the Manchurian monetary system was not well-defined. This is exemplified clearly by the fact that the silver notes issued by the Yokohama Specie Bank, though having been forced to cease functioning as legal tender, still continued to be used in actual transactions, and also by the fact that an attempt to adopt gold, in place of silver, standard in official market quotations at the Dairen Soya-beans Exchange suffered a failure. As explained above, the policies for expansion of the Yen currency sphere that were first devised during the First World War once went on the ebb with the end of the war, and were pursued once again on a full scale during the 1930s.
政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
1979-01-20

著者

金子文夫
東京大学社会科学研究所

第一次大戦期における植民地銀行体系の再編成 : 朝鮮銀行の「満洲」進出を中心に

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