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'Dead End': An Economic and Cultural History of Japan in the Age of the Great Depression, 1927-1937

Objective

The project presents an economic history and socio-cultural reconstruction of Japan in the age of the great depression; it is an attempt to demonstrate the depression's 'total' or multicontextual implications by outlining different but complimentary views of what was defined as the depression's core problems (and their possible solutions) within different social classes and within different strands of thought. Seen in historical perspective, it covers the period from the 'ShMwa financial crisis' (1927) until the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937). The project consists out of three components: First, it addresses the macro-economic ideas in vogue at the time. It specifically concentrates on the personalities and roles of finance ministers Inoue Junnosuke • –K© and especially Takahashi Korekiyo ØK/ ('Japan's Keynes'), who has widely been credited for smoothening the role of the global depression on the Japanese economy. The second part of the project rests with the origins of depression in Japan's official and semi-official colonies in 1927 and the role the latter played in fueling the later crisis on the Japanese mainland. The project investigates the role of speculation, and inquires to which degree the effects of depression were 'imported' from the subsidiary economies of Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, and Manchuria. Third, as this project has a strong focus on the role economic realities were identified ('semantics'), it also develops a cultural history of the age of depression. The project identifies the rise of a new vocabulary and discourse in an era obsessed with the idea of an economic and moral dead end (ikizumari).

Call for proposal

ERC-2009-StG
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Host institution

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
EU contribution
€ 549 441,60
Address
OUDE MARKT 13
3000 Leuven
Belgium

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Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Principal investigator
Michael Schiltz (Dr.)
Administrative Contact
Stijn Delauré (Dr.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (1)