Japanese historians often cite the minutes of the Imperial Diet[1] to demonstrate changes in state policy and the views of officials. The National Diet Library’s (NDL) “Database System for the Minutes of the Imperial Diet” (Teikoku gikai kaigiroku kensaku shisutemu 帝国議会会議録検索システム, henceforth “the system”) has been available for some time. Historian Ōmae Shinya 大前信也 made good use of the system to examine how parliamentarians expressed public concerns about tax rises and the government’s increasing military spending following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937. He also elucidated the government’s stance on these issues as documented in officials’ responses. When Ōmae’s book was published in 2021, however, the minutes were only available as images, except those from the 22nd legislative term held after WWII. In August 2024, the OCR-derived text data of the minutes from 1890 to 1947 were finally made publicly available. This means that researchers can now search for speeches containing specific keywords in just a few minutes. Drawing on my article recently published in the Financial History Review, I will discuss how the system can be used to study modern East Asian history.
My article examines how the government employed the “internal financing mechanism” to generate significant credit for production while avoiding runaway inflation, which is an organisational expression of the government’s macroeconomic approach in war financing. I therefore leveraged the system to find speeches related to discussions on inflation, such as wartime officials’ thoughts on the causes of hyperinflation or runaway inflation.
The system only has a Japanese interface. I entered the term infurēshon インフレーション (inflation) and set the time range to “July 1937 to August 1945” (from the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War to the armistice) (Figure 1). The system found 271 minutes and 494 passages containing the term. Results can be ordered by date or relevance. The keyword is highlighted in the OCR-derived text results (Figure 2). These results can also be viewed in the PDF file of the original minutes (Figure 3).
Figure 1: Keyword Search.
Figure 2: Highlighted Keyword in Results.
Figure 3: PDF File of Results.
By analysing the results, I argued in the article that Japanese policymakers may not have had a grand and unifying scheme such as the “internal financing mechanism,” but their directions for war financing nevertheless showed consistency. Furthermore, they understood that inflation was inevitable due to the ever-increasing expenditures and the amount of government bonds, as well as increased demand for labour and raw materials, and thus their focus was on keeping inflation at a manageable level. For example, At a meeting of the House of Representatives in March 1939, Ishiwata Sōtarō 石渡荘太郎, the Minister of Finance, stated: ‘it seems that you [Ōmoto Sadatarō 大本貞太郎] acknowledge that a certain degree of price increase is inevitable given the large-scale issuance of government bonds. To some extent, I agree with that view.’ Yet, Ishiwata believed that there was no severe inflation or hyperinflation at present.[2] At another meeting of the House of Representatives in January 1941, Kawada Isao 河田烈, then Minister of Finance, in response to Sugiura Takeo’s 杉浦武雄 question about the prices of raw materials and daily necessities, said: ‘it is clear that inflation is acceptable, but hyperinflation is problematic.’[3] In the later stages of the war, another Minister of Finance, Kaya Okinori 賀屋興宣, told the House of Representatives in January 1943 that ‘the most dangerous threat to economic order during wartime is the phenomenon of hyperinflation…We are working to suppress this threat through comprehensive measures, including the policies of taxation, savings, material control, and production increase.’[4] In January 1945, Ishiwata Sōtarō, who had been reappointed as Minister of Finance, acknowledged in the House of Peers that in a wartime economy, monetary expansion was “inevitable,” and also the ‘inflationary situation will inevitably arise to some extent.’ Ishiwata believed that the inflation problem was also rooted in wages and the supply of goods, but ‘to maintain economic order on the home front, it is essential to control it.’[5] We can therefore conclude that, although successive Japanese cabinets had introduced various temporary financing policies during WWII, these policies followed the guiding principle of mobilising the nation’s financial resources for the planned economic system and the war.
In addition to examining changes in state policy and officials’ views, the system enables researchers to save time when conducting microhistorical studies of policy-making processes and public responses. It also allows us to observe the complex nature of Japanese wartime politics, including tensions between factions. I look forward to a more widespread use of the system in Anglophone scholarship.
Notes
[1] Under the Meiji Constitution (1889-1947), Japan’s Imperial Diet was made up of two houses: the House of Peers and the House of Representatives. The first session of the Imperial Diet was held in November 1890, and the last in March 1947.
[2] ‘Dai 74-kai teikoku gikai shuḡ iin yosan iinkai kaigiroku (sokki) dai 20-kai Show̄ a 14-nen 3-gatsu 9-nichi 第74回帝国議会衆議院予算委員会会議録(速記)第20回昭和14年3月9日’, Teikoku gikai kaigiroku kensaku shisutemu [henceforth TGKKS], https://teikokugikai-i.ndl.go.jp/#/detail?minId=007413541X02019390309.
[3] ‘Dai 76-kai teikoku gikai shuḡ iin yosan iinkai kaigiroku (sokki) dai 6-kai Show̄ a 16-nen 1-gatsu 27-nichi 第76回帝国議会衆議院予算委員会会議録(速記) 第6回昭和16年1月27日’, TGKKS, https://teikokugikai-i.ndl.go.jp/#/detail?minId=007613541X00619410127.
[4] ‘Dai 81-kai teikoku gikai shuḡ iin giji sokkiroku dai 5-gō Show̄ a 18-nen 1-gatsu 29-nichi第81回帝国議会衆議院議事速記録第5号昭和18年1月29日’, TGKKS, https://teikokugikai-i.ndl.go.jp/#/detail?minId=008113242X00519430129.
[5] ‘Dai 86-kai teikoku gikai kizokuin Show̄ a 20-nendo ippan kaikei saishutsu no zaigen ni mitsuru-tō no tame no kos̄ ai hakkō ni kansuru hor̄ itsuan tokubetsu iinkai giji sokki dai 2-gō Show̄ a 20-nen 1-gatsu 30-nichi 第86回帝国議会貴族院昭和二十年度一般会計歳出の財源に充つる等の為の公債発行に関する法律案特別委員会議事速記第2号昭和20年1月30日’, TGKKS, https://teikokugikai-i.ndl.go.jp/#/detail?minId=008601747X00219450130.
References
Ōmae, Shinya. 2021. Jihen kakudai no seiji kōzō: Senpi chōtatsu to rikugun, gikai, ōkurashō 事変拡大の政治構造：戦費調達と陸軍、議会、大蔵省. Tōkyō: Fuyō shobō.
Wong, Tsz Ho. 2025. “The ‘Internal Financing Mechanism’ and (Hyper-)inflation in the Wartime Japanese Empire.” Financial History Review 32, issue 1: 43-81. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565025100073.
Cover Image: “The House of Peers in session with Emperor Meiji giving a speech (Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu, 1890)” is public domain.
