Asobu Yanagisawa - Retiring in AY2016

After my appointment in 1994, I tackled two themes: (1) research on Japanese companies in China and (2) the history of modern Japanese small and medium-sized commercial and industrial businesses. For the first theme, I wrote several research papers in the 1990s on the activities of Japanese-affiliated companies and economic organizations that expanded into Dalian during the pre-war period, and in 1999, I published "Nihonjin no Shokuminchi Keiken—Dairen Nihonjin Shōkōgyōsha no Rekishi—" (The Colonial Experience of the Japanese: A History of Japanese Merchants and Industrialists in Dalian). In this research, I addressed the question of why Japanese merchants who migrated to Chinese cities after the Russo-Japanese War faced business difficulties and became the social foundation of support for the Kwantung Army's military invasion of Manchuria. I clarified the evolution of the Dalian Japanese business community, the trends of economic organizations, and the path of Japanese merchants and industrialists from the wartime period to their repatriation. Two years after my appointment, the economic history faculty members of the Faculty of Economics held a symposium titled "Stagnation and Decline in Economic History." I presented a report on "The Process of Decline of Japanese Merchants and Industrialists in Manchuria," providing an empirical analysis of the business transitions of Japanese business owners in Dalian from the 1910s to the late 1920s (published in *Mita Gakkai Zasshi* [Mita Journal of Economics], Vol. 92, No. 1). This report provided the empirical foundation for writing "The Colonial Experience of the Japanese." Additionally, in the graduate school, a new project course titled "The Economy and Society of Manchuria" was established in fiscal year 1995, and I began a joint research project with Professors Takao Matsumura and Akira Tanaka in collaboration with the South Manchuria Railway (Mantetsu) Archives at the Jilin Provincial Academy of Social Sciences in China. Through international research exchanges, we were able to produce research findings that surpassed previous studies in Japan on topics such as the key players in Manchuria's "soybean economy," the reality of labor management at the Mantetsu wharves, and the "standard of investigation" in Mantetsu's research activities (published in "Mantetsu Rōdōshi no Kenkyū" [A Study of Mantetsu's Labor History] and "Mantetsu no Chōsa to Kenkyū" [Mantetsu's Surveys and Research]). Supported by financial backing from sources such as the Faculty of Economics Research and Education Fund, I traveled to the Changchun Mantetsu Archives every August for research exchanges with researchers from the Jilin Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

My own research on Japanese merchants and industrialists in Manchuria and the full-scale research on Mantetsu history that began in 1995 were initially separate, but as data collection and analysis progressed, the two began to partially merge within my academic world. Specifically, as in-depth investigations into the merchants handling Manchuria's specialty product, soybeans, progressed and their actual conditions were revealed, I became aware of the unique importance of the plight of these specialty product merchants. This enabled a full-scale clarification of how Mantetsu perceived these merchants, who occupied a "middle-tier" position within the three-tiered structure of the "Japanese economic structure in Manchuria." Furthermore, the business activities of Yutaro Aioi, who was the president of the Dalian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, could be positioned from the perspective of Mantetsu's wharf cargo management and transportation business, clarifying the trajectory of Japanese business leaders.

The research for the second theme, "the history of modern Japanese small and medium-sized commercial and industrial businesses," proceeded at a slow pace. Although works such as "Small and Medium Enterprise Policy" in the history of trade and industrial policy, Tsunehiko Yui's edited volume "Sezon no Rekishi, Jō" (The History of Seibu Saison, Vol. 1), and research on the establishment process of the Shoko Chukin Bank had already been published in the early 1990s, I made a joint report with Masakatsu Daimon on "Wartime Labor Mobilization" in October 1995 (published in *Tochi Seido Shigaku* [The Journal of Agrarian History], No. 151). In the 2000s, I was able to publish research findings such as "Small and Medium-Sized Merchants in the Post-War Reconstruction Period" (in Akira Hara, ed., "Fukkōki no Nihon Keizai" [The Japanese Economy in the Reconstruction Period]), "Kawaguchi City" (in Kaichiro Oishi, ed., "Kindai Nihon Toshishi Kenkyū" [A Study of Modern Japanese Urban History]), "Distribution Control under the Wartime System" (in Kanji Ishii, ed., "Kindai Nihon Ryūtsūshi" [A History of Modern Japanese Distribution]), and "The Reorganization of Small and Medium-Sized Commerce and Industry in Tokyo" (in Akira Hara, ed., "Senji Nihon no Keizai Saihensei" [The Economic Reorganization of Wartime Japan]). Recently, I have been advancing my research on wholesale and retail merchants and manufacturing wholesalers during the high-growth period, and I have been able to compile four studies on the history of small and medium-sized commercial and industrial businesses in Tokyo.

The reason I have been able to engage in my research activities so freely and actively, based on these two pillars, is that I have been blessed with the excellent academic environment of the Keio University Faculty of Economics, greatly encouraged by the sincere dedication of my colleagues to their scholarship, and fortunate to have outstanding collaborators in joint research. Based on the materials I have accumulated over 23 years, I intend to continue to vigorously pursue my research activities.

(Interview conducted in January 2017)