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Postwar Japan's National Salvation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Sheldon Garon
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The following is a chapter from my new book, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves. Beyond Our Means tells the global story of how many states and societies have actively encouraged household saving from roughly 1800 to the present. To do so, they established an array of institutions aimed at attracting “small savers.” These included savings banks, postal savings systems, school savings programs, and wartime and postwar savings campaigns. Although four of the chapters present the history of Japanese savings-promotion, the book also describes the development of similar efforts to encourage saving in Europe, the United States, and other Asian nations. This is not simply a comparative history, but emphatically a transnational history. Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Germans love to talk about thrift as a part of their distinctive “culture,” yet nations do not save simply because of indigenous traditions. The similarities in savings institutions and campaigns across the globe are far from coincidental. They resulted in large part from transnational or international exchanges of knowledge. The postal savings bank, for example, was not a peculiarly Japanese institution, but originated in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. In turn, the emerging Japanese model of savings-led development profoundly influenced rising economies in East and Southeast Asia, including China. Rather than offering disparate case studies, the book interweaves the history of savings promotion on three continents.

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Research Article
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Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 50 , December 2011, e1
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Copyright © The Authors 2011

References

Notes

1 “Chochiku zōkyō hōsakuan” [Plan for savings promotion], ca. August-September 1946, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 1, doc. 4, Sengo zaiseishi shiryō (hereafter SZS), Ministry of Finance, Japan.

2 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999).

3 U.S. State Department, Interim Research and Intelligence Section, [and] Research and Analysis Branch, “Control of Inflation,” Report R & A no. 2451, October 1, 1945, reprinted in Ōkurashō Zaiseishishitsu, Shōwa zaiseishi: Shūsen kara kōwa made, vol. 20 (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha, 1982), 49192.

4 Yūseishō, Yūsei hyakunenshi, 747, 751; Yamaguchi Osamu, Yūbin chokin no hyakunen (Tokyo: Yūbin Chokin Shinkōkai, 1977), 118-20; Horioka, “Consuming and Saving,” 283.

5 Chochiku Zōkyō Chūō Iinkai, Chochiku undōshi (hereafter CU), 15.

6 Yano Shōtarō, “Ōkura daijin rajio hōsō,” 5, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 2, doc. 21, SZS.

7 Italics mine. “Ōkura daijin kōen genkō” [Finance minister's address], September 16, 1947, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 2, doc. 36, SZS.

8 Ōkurashō [Ginkōkyoku], “Chochiku zōkyō ni kansuru ken” [Savings promotion], ca. June 1946, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 1, doc. 3, SZS.

9 “Jikan chochiku kōen shiryō” [Vice minister's address], April 5, 1947, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 2, doc. 1, SZS.

10 J. C. Smith (Chief, Money and Banking Branch, Finance Division, Economic and Scientific Section, SCAP), “Statement for Release in Connection with Savings Campaign,” ca. September 1948, Noda bunsho, Chochiku zōkyō taisaku, doc. 42, SZS.

11 Shunya Yoshimi, “Consuming America, Producing Japan,” in Garon and Maclachlan, Ambivalent Consumer, 67-68.

12 Minami Hiroshi, Zoku Shōwa bunka: 1945-1989 [Shōwa culture, part 2] (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1990), 13-14.

13 New York Times, September 24, 2003, sec. A, p. 17.

14 Lizabeth Cohen, “The Consumers' Republic: An American Model for the World?” in Garon and Maclachlan, Ambivalent Consumer, 58-59; Sheryl Kroen, “A Political History of the Consumer,” Historical Journal 47, no.3 (September 2004): 709-36.

15 Richard. B. Finn, Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 37, 332, n. 25; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 115.

16 Laura E. Hein, Fueling Growth: The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, 1990), 147, 158-59, 356, n. 7.

17 Quoted in Kokumin Seikatsu Sentaa, Sengo shōhisha undōshi [History of postwar consumer movement] (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1997), 61, n. 4.

18 Yano Shōtarō, “Ōkura daijin rajio hōsō,” 2.

19 Nagata Makoto, “Kokusai kinken kyōkai to sekai kinken dee” [International Thrift Institute and World Thrift Day], Chochiku jihō [Savings times; hereafter CJ], no. 19 (January 1954): 80-86; “Kaigai chochiku posutaa, kyatchi fureezu-shū” [Foreign savings posters and catchphrases], ibid., 67-71; “Berugii, Oranda ryōkoku no chochiku undō” [Belgian and Dutch savings campaigns], CJ, no. 43 (March 1960): 56-57.

20 “Jikan chochiku kōen shiryō.”

21 Tsūka Antei Taisaku Jimukyoku [Office of Currency Stabilization Policy], Chochiku to infureeshon [Saving and inflation], pamphlet (Tokyo: Nihon Ginkō, 1947).

22 E.g., Tōkyō-to Tsūka Antei Suishin Iinkai, “Tōkyō-to [cho]chiku zōkyō hōsaku” [Savings-promotion program in Metropolitan Tokyo], ca. October 1946, doc. 26; Nihon Ginkō Kyōto shiten, “Kyōto-fu kyūkoku chochiku undō kin'yū kikanbetsu mokuhyō narabi tasseigaku” [National Salvation Savings Campaign in Kyoto prefecture: targets and achieved savings by financial institution], ca. January 1947, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku 1, doc. 52, SZS.

23 Ōkurashō, “Chochiku jissen mohan chiku setchi yōryō” [Points for setting up model savings districts], ca. April 1947, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku 2, doc. 7, SZS.

24 Ōkurashō, “Shōwa 22 nendo yobikin shishutsusho” [Preparatory budget outlays for 1947], 10, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 3, doc. 8, SZS.

25 [Ōkurashō], Ginkōkyoku, Kokumin chochikuka, “Shōwa 24 nendo kyūkoku chochiku undō hōsaku yōkōan” [1949 National Salvation Savings Campaign plan], April 5, 1949, p. 3, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku 5, doc. 4, SZS.

26 Tsūka Antei Taisaku Honbu [Currency Stabilization Board], “Yokin ni kansuru seron chōsa” [Opinion poll on savings deposits], November 1949, p. 2, Noda bunsho, Chochiku dōkō, 1947-51, doc. 7, SZS.

27 Ōkurashō, “Chochiku suishin kabu kikō no kongo no un'ei ni tsuite” [Future operations of the savings-promotion substructure], ca. January 1949, p. 1, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, vol. 4, doc. 44, SZS.

28 Tsūka Antei Taisaku Honbu, “Chochiku undō sankanen o kaiko shite” [Recalling three years of the savings campaign], November 1949, pp. 5, 8-10, Noda bunsho, Chochiku dōkō, doc. 6, SZS; Tsūka Antei Taisaku Honbu, “Yokin ni kansuru seron chōsa,” 1.

29 CU, 16-17, 22-27; Ōkurashō, Nihon Ginkō, “ Kōwa kinen tokubetsu chochiku undō yōkō” [Outline of the Special Savings Campaign to Commemorate the Peace Treaty], ca. August 1951, p. 1, Noda bunsho, Chochiku zōkyō, doc. 56, SZS.

30 CU, 148.

31 Kyoko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation, 1945-1952 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992), 52-53.

32 CU, 47, 74, 87; Chochiku Zōkyō Chūō Iinkai, Chochiku hakusho, 241; Central Council for Savings Promotion, Savings and Savings Promotion Movement in Japan (Tokyo: Central Council for Savings Promotion, 1981), 41-43.

33 New York Times, June 5, 1987, sec. D, p. 1; CU, 42, 44-45, 128-30.

34 CU, 17, 20, 72, 162; Kin'yū Zaisei Jijō Kenkyūkai, “Kodomo ginkō” no un'ei ni tsuite [Operations of children's banks] (Tokyo: Kin'yū Zaisei Jijō Kenkyūkai, 1995), 4.

35 For an excellent overview, see Thomas F. Cargill and Naoyuki Yoshino, Postal Savings and Fiscal Investment in Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9, 12, 42, 51-58, 64-69.

36 Savings Banks International, 1983, no. 4 (Winter): 52-53; Yūseishō, Yūsei hyakunenshi, 763; Patricia L. Maclachlan, The People's Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 187-201 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming, 2011).

37 Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 210, also 207-209.

38 Fujin jihō [Women's times], no. 30 (July 1955): 2.

39 E.g., Yūcho jihō [Postal savings times], no. 324 (August 1974): 3; Shufu no tomo (December 1974): 214-19.

40 See Charles Yuji Horioka, “Why Is Japan's Household Saving Rate So High? A Literature Survey,” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 4, no. 1 (March 1990): 64-66, 76-80; David D. Selover, The Japanese Saving Rate: Another Literature Review, JDB Discussion Paper Series, no. 9312 (Tokyo: Japan Development Bank, 1994), 50-51.

41 Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, 163-66.

42 “Dai 3-kai zenkoku chochiku jimu shokuin kōshūkai” [Third national savings officers training course], September 17, 1947, p. 3, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, 3, doc. 1, SZS.

43 “Kyūkoku chochiku tokubetsu undō ni kansuru Katayama naikaku sōri daijin dan” [Interview with Prime Minister Katayama on the Special National Salvation Savings Campaign], September 1, 1947, p. 1, Aichi bunsho, Chochiku: Chochiku zōkyōsaku, 2, doc. 46, SZS.

44 Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, 164, also 163-72.

45 Interview with Tachi Ryūichi (professor of economics, University of Tokyo), November 27, 1996, Tokyo. Suzuki Takeo in Chochiku Zōkyō Chūō Iinkai, Chochiku hakusho, 2; for Tsuru Shigeto, see “Dai 3-kai zenkoku chochiku jimu shokuin kōshūkai,” 2; Morito Tatsuo in Ōkura Zaimu Kyōkai, Shakai kaihatsu ni shimeru chochiku no jūyōsei [Importance of saving in social development] (Tokyo: Ōkura Zaimu Kyōkai, 1965), 80.

46 Italics mine. Minobe Ryōkichi, Keizai to seiji [Economics and politics] (Tokyo: Jitugyō no Nihonsha 1955), 11-12, 199; also Minobe Ryōkichi, Uno Masao, and Ujiie Hisako, Kakei to seikatsu [Household finance and daily life] (Tokyo: Dōbun Shoin, 1958), 64-65; cf. Laura Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth-Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 162-75.

47 Andrew Gordon, “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan,” Social Politics 4, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 245-83.

48 CJ, no. 20 (April 1954): 120.

49 See Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, chap. 6.

50 See Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Akarui seikatsu no kakeibo, 1992 [Household account book for the bright life] (Tokyo: Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, 1991), 9, 23, 124; Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Chochiku to shōhi ni kansuru seron chōsa, 1996 (Tokyo: Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, 1996), 146.

51 Chochiku Zōkyō Chūō Iinkai, Chochiku ni kansuru seron chōsa, 1987, p. 124.

52 Yucho jihō, no. 141 (April 1959): 13; “Kakeibo o chūshin to shita guruupu katsudō ni tsuite” [Group activities focused on household account book], Shin seikatsu to chochiku: Dai 1-kai zenkoku fujin no tsudoi kiroku [New life and saving: Record of the first national women's meeting] (Tokyo: Chochiku Zōkyō Chūō Iinkai, 1959), 42-49.

53 Ōkurashō, “Shōwa 22 nendo yobikin shishutsusho.

54 Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, “Wagaya no maruhi! Yarikuri” [Confidential to our homes! Make do], memo, doc. '96-1, March 1996, p. 2; Fujin jihō, no. 67 (October 1958): 2; CU, 19, 33.

55 See Ono Yoshisa (chair, Nishi-Tamagawa Women's Council), “Dannasama no osake ni baketa” [Lest it be spent on the husband's drinking], Fujin jihō 21 (September. 1954): 1; see Ezra F. Vogel, Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 76-77.

56 Fujin jihō 34 (November 1955): 1.

57 Funada Fumiko, “Kotoshi no mokuhyō: Katei no kagakuka e” [This year's goal: bringing science to the home], Shufuren tayori 10 (January 1950): 2; Oku Mumeo, “Shufu chochiku no undō” [Housewives' savings movement], Shufuren tayori 67 (November 1954): 1.

58 Oku Mumeo, “Shin seikatsu e” [Toward new life], Shufuren tayori 52 (August 1953): 1.

59 Keizai Kikakuchō [Economic Planning Agency], Kokumin seikatsu hakusho, 1959 [Whitepaper on national life] (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1959), 1, 74-77; Simon Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 247.

60 Patricia L. Maclachlan, Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 94.

61 Partner, Assembled in Japan, 5, also 149-56, 168-70; Johnson, MITI, 16.

62 Horioka, “Consuming and Saving,” 261, 265, 268-89.

63 Andrew Gordon, “From Singer to Shinpan: Consumer Credit in Modern Japan,” in Garon and Maclachlan, Ambivalent Consumer, 137-62; Sand, House and Home, 374-75; Gordon, Modern History of Japan 249, 267.

64 Partner, Assembled in Japan, 163-65.

65 International Labour Office, Year-book of Labour Statistics, 1960, in CJ, no. 53 (September 1962): inside back cover.

66 Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 17, 111.

67 Koizumi Akira, “Keizai no antei seichō o sasaeru mono: Shōhi wa bitoku ka” [Factors supporting stable economic growth: Is consumption the virtue?], CJ, no. 50 (December 1961): 15; Usami Jun, “Seikatsu to chochiku” [Daily life and saving], CJ, no. 86 (July 1966): 6-7.

68 Okazaki Kaheita, in Shin seikatsu to chochiku 3 (1961): 7-10; Vance Packard, The Waste Makers (New York: David McKay, 1960), 274-93; Partner, Assembled in Japan, 130-31, 188-89.

69 Oku Mumeo, in Shin seikatsu to chochiku, 3:12-13.

70 Fujin jihō, no. 107 (February 1962): 1; CU, 60-61.

71 Economic Planning Agency, Whitepaper on National Life, 1975 (Tokyo: Economic Planning Agency, 1975), foreword, 132, 136-37.

72 “Infure ni kachinuku: Shin-chokingaku nyūmon” [Fighting inflation: A primer on the new savings school], Shūkan sankei, December 28, 1974, pp. 156, 158.

73 Charter of the Global Greens, Canberra 2001, 5, 14, accessed July 23, 2009; E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered (London: Blond and Briggs, 1973), 52.

74 Keiko Higuchi, “Kore kara no shōhi seikatsu” [Consumer life from now on], Kurashi no chie [Tips on living] 94 (1974): 1.

75 Itō Akiko, “Kakeibo kichō no susume” [Encouragement of keeping household account books], Kurashi no chie 116 (November 1977): 1; 118 (March 1978): 3.

76 Central Council for Savings Promotion, Savings and Savings Promotion Movement, 23-24.

77 Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Paul A. Samuelson, “Two Success Stories,” Newsweek, March 9, 1981, p. 71; Klein, in Business Week, June 30, 1980, p. 61

78 Ronald Reagan, “Address before the Japanese Diet,” November 11, 1983, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, book 2 (1983), 1575-77.

79 Kenneth B. Pyle, The Japanese Question (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1992), 50-51.

80 Toyama Nihonjin no kinben, 163-64.

81 The Economist, April 7, 1979, p. 61.

82 Yomiuri shinbun, March 31, 1988, p. 7; Horioka, “Why Is Japan's Household Saving Rate So High?” 72.

83 Toyama, Nihonjin no kinben, 215-16; Shimomura Osamu, in Pyle, Japanese Question, 112-13; Maekawa, in Kurashi no chie, special issue (February 1982): 3.

84 Zen Chifuren, no. 123 (November 1986): 3; no. 125 (January 1987): 1, 3.

85 Yomiuri shinbun, October 28, 1990, p. 11; November 22, 1987, p. 7.

86 Yoshino Naoyuki, “Yūbin chokin no shōrei to zaisei tōyūshi” [Future of postal savings and FILP], Toshi mondai 99, no. 11 (November 2008): 56-61.

87 “Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai Heisei 9 nendo undō hōshin” [Campaign policy of Central Council for Savings Information], mimeo, 1997, p. 1.

88 Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Hoshigari hime no bōken (1990) and UFO ni tsukamatta kodomotachi (1991).

89 See this link, accessed August 11, 2009; interviews with the Central Council for Financial Services' Masunaga Rei (Chairman) and Okazaki Ryōko (Manager), July 2002; also with Okazaki, June 10, 2008.

90 Donald MacIntyre, “Spend Japan Spend,” Time (Asia ed.), April 20, 1998, pp. 14-16.

91 Kin'yū Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Kin'yū kyōiku puroguramu [Financial education program] (Tokyo: Kin'yū Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, 2007), 21-23.

92 Kin'yū Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Kakei no kin'yū kōdō ni kansuru seron chōsa, 2008 [Survey of household finances], p. 3; ibid., 2007, p. 11; for data on consumer spending, debt, and assets, see Kin'yū kōhō chūō iinkai, Kurashi to kin'yū nandemo deeta [Data on living and finances] (Tokyo: Kin'yū Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, 2007), 8, 21, 37. German figures from 2001.

93 The Economist, July 5, 2003, p. 67.

94 Figures from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

95 “Index of Consumption Expenditure Level: Two-or-More-Person Households,” 1981-2008 (adjusted for inflation and by distribution of household by number of household members), Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, accessed August 14, 2009.

96 Gordon, “From Singer to Shinpan,” 160-62.

97 Charles Yuji Horioka, Wataru Suzuki, and Tatsuo Hatta “Aging, Saving and Public Pensions,” Asian Economic Policy Review 2, no. 2 (2007): 303-19.

98 Charles Yuji Horioka, “The Causes of Japan's ‘Lost Decade’: The Role of Household Consumption,” Japan and the World Economy 18, no. 4 (December 2006): 378-400.

99 E.g., “Watashitachi no tame-teku & setsuyaku waza” [Our techniques for saving and economizing], Shufu no tomo 86, no. 10 (July 2002): 68-85; “Kakeibo de fuan o kaishō [Erasing insecurity with an account book], Fujin no tomo 102, no. 11 (November 2008): 122-45.

100 Account-keeping statistics in Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, Seikatsu sekkei no tatekata [Constructing a life plan] (Tokyo: Chochiku Kōhō Chūō Iinkai, 1999), 34; OECD Economic Outlook, no. 86 (November 2009), Annex Table 58.

101 The Economist, August 15, 2009, p. 66. Chapter 10: Exporting Thrift, or the Myth of “Asian Values”