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American-Japanese Direct Foreign Investment Relationships, 1930–1952*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
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One of the leading experts on the history of multinational enterprise, Mira Wilkins here sets forth the history of American multinational investment in Japan and Japanese multinational investment in the United States during two crucial decades. The tumultuous years from 1930 to 1952 forced these companies to deal with the vastly different challenges of depression, war, and peace. Professor Wilkins explains how they adapted to their changing environment. She also provides noteworthy support for the view that cross-investment was not symmetrical.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982
References
1 See Krause, Lawrence and Sekiguchi, Sueo, “Japan and the World Economy,” in Patrick, Hugh and Rosovsky, Henry, eds., Asia's New Giant (Washington, D.C., 1976), 447.Google Scholar
2 The figures for 1930 are from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, A New Estimate of American Investments Abroad, Trade Info. Bull. 767 (Washington, 1931), 20Google Scholar; for 1936 from the U.S. Department of Commerce, American Direct Investments in Foreign Countries-1936, Eco, Ser. I (Washington, 1938), 16–17Google Scholar; for 1940 from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, American Direct Investments in Foreign Countries-1940, Eco. Ser. 20 (Washington, 1942), 16Google Scholar; for 1941 from U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of the Secretary, Census of American-Owned Assets in Foreign Countries (Washington, 1947), 71.Google Scholar All of these pamphlets are conveniently reprinted in Estimates of United States Direct Foreign Investments (New York, 1976).
3 The figure for 1937 is in U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Foreign Long-Term Investment in the United States 1937–39, Eco. Ser. 11 (Washington, 1940), 22. The June 14, 1941 figureis in U.S. Department of Treasury, Census of Foreign-Owned Assets in the United States (Washington, 1945), 63. These two pamphlets are conveniently reprinted in Mira Wilkins, ed., Foreign Investments in the U.S. (New York, 1977).
4 My calculations based on A New Estimate (Trade Info. Bull. 767), passim.
5 For background on multinational corporate behavior see Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational, Enterprise, American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, 1970) and Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (Cambridge, 1974).
6 Unless otherwise noted, comments on the U. S.-Japanese automobile industry are based on materials put together for Wilkins, Mira, “The Role of U.S. Business,” in Borg, Dorothy, ed., Pearl Harbor as History (New York, 1973), 360–361Google Scholar; Wilkins, Mira and Hill, Frank Ernest, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents (Detroit, 1964), 254–256.Google Scholar Data in Ace. 390, Box 85, and Ace. 38, Boxes 29, 38, and 41, Ford Archives, Dearborn, Mich., have been very useful. We have also found helpful Hideichiro Nakamura, “The Activities of the Japan Economic Federation,” in Pearl Harbor as History, 415–416.
7 B.F. Goodrichhadin 1917 made an agreement with Baron Furukawa and established the Yokohama Rubber Co., making tires and various industrial products. With the 1923 earthquake everything was destroyed. In 1929, the company was reestablished. Goodrich put up most of the financing, and in 1930 had a 57 per cent interest in the Yokohama Rubber Company. Furukawa, however, provided the management. The business expanded in the 1930s; American engineers would turn up to show “how to make better tires,” but their number was rarely more than four. The Japanese were in charge. Interview in Japan, September 1965. See also J. Crawford, “Memorandum on the Visit of Messrs. Caywood and Aspell of B.F. Goodrich Rubber Co. to Mr. Ford's office,” Oct. 15, 1936, Ace. 390, Box 85, Ford Archives, Dearborn, Mich.
* In Ford records the name is translated Yoshiyuki Aikawa.
** Johannes Hirschmeier and Tsunehiko Yui, The Development of Japanese Business 1600–1973, 168, give the date as 1928.
8 Nakagawa, K., “Business Strategy and Industrial Structure in Pre-World War II Japan,” in Nakagawa, Keiichiro, ed., Strategy and Structure of Big Business (Tokyo, 1976), 29–30Google Scholar, and Hirschmeier, Johannes and Yui, Tsunehiko, The Development of Japanese Business 1600–1973 (Cambridge, 1975), 168Google Scholar; Kamiya, Shotaro, My Life with Toyota (n.p., Japan: Toyota Motor Sales Co., 1976), 30Google Scholar, gives the December 1933 date.
9 Hirschmeier, and Yui, , Japanese Business, 153, 170.Google Scholar The Toyoda loom was a triumph of Japanese technology Lockwood, W.W., The Economic Development of Japan (Princeton, 1954), 332Google Scholar. See ibid., 219, on where Toyot Motor Car Co. fits in the Mitsui empire (1946). Kamiya, My Life with Toyota, 37 (on early history of Toyota)
10 Mitsubishi Economic Research Bureau, Japanese Trade and Industry (London, 1936), 307.
11 H.H. Hesser to C.E. Sorensen, Apr. 10, 1935, Ace. 390, Box 85, Ford Archives, and interview B. Kopf, Mexico City, Dec. 11, 1961, on suppliers. Masaru Udagawa, “Japan's Automobile Marketing,” paper delivered at Business History Conference, Shizuoka, Japan, Jan. 1980.
* The earliest vehicles were “Toyodas,” after the family name. The company decided “Toyota” sounded clearer and was better for advertising purposes. Toyota became the product's name in October 1936 and the motor car company's name in August 1937. It was Kiichiro Toyoda, who established Toyota Motor Company. Kamiya, My Years with Toyota, 41, 109.
12 The chronology is based on correspondence in Acc. 390, Box 85, Ford Archives. Kamiya, My Life with Toyota, 41. See also Yukio Cho, “An Inquiry into the Problem of Importing American Capital into Manchuria” in Pearl Harbor as History, 389.
13 In 1938 and 1939, Ford also had negotiations with Toyota for a possible joint-venture. See B. Kopf to J. Crawford, Sept. 1, 1938, Acc. 390, Box 85 and Kopf to Crawford, Nov. 4, 1938, Acc. 38, Box 41, and 1939 correspondence in Acc. 390, Box 85, Ford Archives. See also Kamiya, My Life with Toyota, 71–72. K. Nakagawa, “Business Strategy,” 27 (on company rank).
14 Interview in Japan with Goodrich personnel, Sept. 1965.
15 Toshiba, , History of Toshiba (Tokyo, 1964), 97ff.Google Scholar (I have had a translation made of parts of this Japanese-language history). See also Wilkins, The Emergence, 94.
16 Toshiba, History; K. Nakagawa, “Business Strategy,” 27.
17 ibid., 31.
18 In 1899, Western Electric acquired an interest in Nippon Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (Nippon Electric Co.). Nippon Electric was the first industrial company in Japan in which foreign capital participated in the equity, under the revised treaties and new laws (July 1, 1899). In 1920 Sumitomo Wire and Cable Co. bought 5 per cent of the shares of Nippon Electric and Nippon Electric acquired 25 percent of the shares of Sumitomo Wire and Cable Co. When in 1925 Western Electric sold its entire international business to I.T.T., its interest in Nippon Electric was 55.5 per cent. In the early 1930s the association with Sumitomo interests was temporarily strengthened. Thus, in the 1930s, I.T.T. had interests in Nippon Electric and Sumitomo Wire and Cable. See data in Western Electric Archives, N.Y.; letter Howard F. Van Zandt, I.T.T. to Mira Wilkins, Oct. 12, 1965; interview, Iwadare, Kamakura, Japan, Oct. 1, 1965; on Western Electric's sale of its foreign operations to I.T.T, see Wilkins, Maturing, 70.
19 A. Okochi, “A Comparison of Choice of Technology,” in Nakagawa, Strategy and Structure, 166.
20 Interview Mr. Motomoro, Mitsui & Co., Tokyo, Oct. 1965; data from MITI.
21 Interview National Cash Register, Tokyo, Sept. 1965, and interviews IBM, Tokyo, Sept. 1965. In 1935 Nippon National Cash Register Sales Company became the sales subsidiary of Nippon Cash Register Co.
22 Wilkins, Maturing, 250; interview Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
23 Wilkins, Maturing, 211–213.
24 Anderson, Irvine H. Jr, The Standard-Vacuum Oil Company and United States East Asian Policy 1933–1941 (Princeton, 1975), 214.Google Scholar
25 See Anderson, Standard-Vacuum and Wilkins, “The Role of U.S. Business,” 362–367.
26 See Note 2 above.
27 This assumption was based on my reading of the literature on Japanese multinational enterprises, for example, Tsurumi, Yoshi, The Japanese Are Coming (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar; Yoshino, M.Y., Japan's Multinational Enterprises (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar; Kojima, Kiyoshi, Japanese Direct Foreign Investment (Rutland, Vt., 1978)Google Scholar. It was an assumption shared by all my academic colleagues, based primarily on the absence of documentation of the earlier Japanese role in the United States.
* The rise in investment in distribution, 1940–1941, indicated on Table 2, may be a result of different classifications made by the U.S. Commerce Department and the Treasury Department. On the other hand, it may be a consequence of a shift in certain U.S. investments from manufacturing to distribution.
28 I have depended heavily on the published Annual Reports of the Alien Property Custodian. The Alien Property Custodian was responsible for Japanese properties in the United States seized during World War II. The Annual Reports have been conveniently assembled in U.S. Office of the Alien Property Custodian, Annual Reports 1942–1946 (New York, 1977). I will henceforth cite these reports as APC, Annual Report, and add the appropriate dates. In 1980 Nobuo Kawabe completed a Ph.D. dissertation at Ohio State University entitled “Japanese Bus iness in the United States Before World War II: The Case of Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha, the San Francisco and Seattle Branches.” His work used the confiscated records—in English and Japanese—of the two Mitsubishi branches, which he located in Record Group 131 (Records of the Alien Property Custodian), at the Washington National Record Center in Suitland, Maryland. Kawabe's study is the first business history using this collection. He plans further research in these records.
29 APC, Annual Report, 1943–1944, 58.
30 They were $383 million, compared with $61.4 million in direct foreign investments. See U.S. Department of Commerce, A New Estimate, 20.
31 Roberts, John G., Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business (New York, 1973), 241Google Scholar, suggests that many of the loans “were negotiated by Mitsui.”
32 Lockwood, Economic Development, 516–517, describes the Bank of Chosen as playing a major role in the development of Korea. It conducted banking and currency operations for the Japanese Army and colonial government as well as financing Japanese business. It served as fiscal agent for the Kwantung Army. Lockwood says “It also financed a whole series of puppet regimes and companies on the continent. It was even so versatile as to engage in large-scale smuggling of silver, opium, and textiles in the Tientsin area, where the Japanese were trying to break down Chinese administrative authority in 1935–1936.”
33 APC, Annual Report, 1942–1943, 99ff, and APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 218, 221.
34 Lockwood, Economic Development, 249.
35 APC, Annual Report, 1943–1944, 87–88.
36 Ibid., 58.
37 There are good data on Mitsui in K. Nakagawa, “Business Strategy,” 6–7. See also [Mitsui & Co.], The 100 Year History of Mitsui & Co., Ltd., 1876–1976 (Tokyo, 1977), 32, 34, 295.Google Scholar
38 R. Iwata, “Marketing Strategy and Market Structure in Three Nations; the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan,” in Nakagawa, Strategy and Structure, 190, gives the percentage of Japanese foreign trade of Mitsui Bussan, 1897–1932. Eleanor M. Hadley, Antitrust in Japan (Princeton, 1970), 154, gives the percentages for 1936–1945. Using these figures, in the 1930s Mitsui Bussan had a high of Japanese export trade in 1932 (15.9%) and a low in 1936 (9.7%). It held a high of Japanese import trade in 1937 (16.9%) and a low in 1932 (10.2%). In 1941, it was handling 12.8% of Japanese imports.
39 APC, Annual Report 1942–1943, 101.
40 Interview Mitsui & Co. U.S. Inc., Sept. 22, 1975.
41 Hadley, Antitrust in Japan, 152.
42 Ibid., 154. For further data on Mitsui's international trade in the 1930s, but with nothing on its direct investments in the United States, see Roberts, Mitsui, 259–263.
43 APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 81–82. For details, see Kawabe, “Japanese Business,” which deals with Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha and its predecessor, Mitsubshi Goshi Kaisha, which apparently had a New York branch in 1917.
44 APC Annual Report 1942–1943, 100, 101, 104, 106; APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 32; Professor K. Enatsu was immensely helpful to me in sorting out the key companies; Lockwood, Economic Development, 229, 349, 546, and Mitsubishi, Japanese Trade and Industry, 468–470, on Japanese shipping. The 100 Year History, 100–101, 126 (Mitsui).
45 APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 83–84.
46 APC, Annual Report 1942–1943, 152.
47 Wilkins, “The Role of U.S. Business,” 373.
48 Wilkins, “The Role of U.S. Business,” 360.
49 Interviews with IBM officials in Japan, Sept. 1965.
50 Interview Mr. Iwadare, Kamakura, Japan, Oct. 1965.
51 Interview in Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
52 Data from NCR, Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
53 Toshiba, History.
54 APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 9.
55 ibid., 58, 52.
56 ibid., 87–88.
57 APC, Annual Report 1942–1943, 56. The rest were primarily German.
58 APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 82.
59 Ibid., 52.
60 APC, Annual Report 1942–1943, 56, and APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 82.
61 APC, Annual Report 1943–1944, 82.
62 Ibid. and APC, Annual Report 1944–1945, 83.
63 APC Annual Report 1943–1944, 84–86.
64 Ibid., 57.
65 Ibid., 47–49.
66 APC, Annual Report 1944–1945, 37.
67 Ibid., 2. (The statement was signed by Joseph Grew as Acting Secretary of State, H. Morgenthau, Secretary of Treasury, and James Markham, Alien Property Custodian.)
68 On the policies, see Hadley, Antitrust in Japan.
69 Interview W.H. Roberts, Coca Cola, Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
70 Interview IBM officials, Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
71 See Report of Petroleum Advisory Group, May 31, 1951. See also Yoshi Tsurumi, “Japan,” in Vernon, Raymond, ed., The Oil Crisis (New York, 1976), 114–115.Google Scholar
72 Figures from records of Caltex, Tokyo.
73 My files contain a translation of the Foreign Investment Law. My data on reentries are based on information collected in Japan, Sept.-Oct. 1965.
74 Interview Mr. Shozo Hotta, Tokyo, Sept. 1965.
* Data from MITI indicates that in 1950–1951 a total of 45 foreign companies were authorized to do business in Japan and only two were 100 per cent foreign owned.
75 Bank of Tokyo, Profile (Tokyo, n.d.), 10–11.
76 Tsurumi, Yoshi, The Japanese Are Coming (Cambridge, 1976), 135.Google Scholar
77 Bieda, K., The Structure and Operation of the Japanese Economy (Sydney, 1970), 227.Google Scholar
78 U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Business Economics, Foreign Business Investments in the United States, Washington [1962], 34.Google Scholar Reprinted in Wilkins, ed., Foreign Investments in the United States.
79 Bieda, The Structure, 229. Tsurumi, The Japanese, 142, implies that there may have been investment abroad in 1950.
80 This information appears in the Office of the Secretary of State records in Florida! I checked the Secretary of State records in New York and they had no records of the registration of the predecessor companies. The regrouping first occurred in Japan. See Young, Alexander K., The Sogo Shosa (Boulder, Colo., 1979), 37Google Scholar.
81 In 1969, when I was preparing an article on American business relations with Japan in the 1930s for Dorothy Borg's Pearl Harbor as History (see Note 6 above), I could not find American businessmen that carried on certain specific trading, shipping, insuring, and financing functions, I posed my dilemma to a number of specialists on Japanese-American relations. The functions had to exist. Why couldn't I find the U.S. companies that pursued them? No one suggested to me that Japanese investors in the United States might be undertaking these roles; this never occurred to me or any of my colleagues. Until I prepared the present article, I remained mystified. The mystification is now gone. Japanese investors undertook these business activities.
82 In a 1960 Ph.D. dissertation, first published in 1976, Stephen Hymer suggested symmetry in cross-investments. Hymer, Stephen H., The International Operations of National Firms (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar I have demonstrated in Wilkins, Mira, “Cross Currents: American Investments in Europe, European Investments in the United States,” Business and Economic History (edited by Uselding, Paul), VI, 2nd ser., 1977, 22–35Google Scholar, the absence of such symmetry in early U. S.-European cross-investments; this is very apparent in the U. S.-Japanese case.
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