Imitation, Counterfeiting, and the Market in Early Twentieth Century Japan and China: Intra-Asian Trade in Modern Small Sundry Goods

This chapter seeks to contribute to the current scholarly conversation among economists about “market quality”Market quality by examining the concept in a historical case study of cultural transformationCultural transformation . The vehicles of analysis are product imitationImitation and trademark counterfeiting, problems which occurred frequently in early twentieth century Asian marketsMarket of modern small sundry goodsSmall sundry goods . Reframing this essentially “economic” question as a historical formulation opens our eyes to its heretofore under-recognized dimensions: the normative drivers of economic expansion, such as technological transfer and innovationInnovation , have often accompanied their deviant variants in the form of counterfeiting and lower-quality imitationImitation . The manufacturing of such “new products” and the emergence of marketsMarket for low-end shoddy merchandiseShoddy merchandise , however, often lead to the original products’ wider dissemination and greater acceptance by consumersConsumers , with the effect of pervasive and deep-seated cultural transformationCultural transformation . ImitationsImitation of Western sundry consumer goods made in modern Japan were exported in large volumes to China and became a marker and driver of new ways of life and modes of thinking, especially in the coastal cities. The chapter examines the problems of Japanese small business manufacturers’ product imitationImitation and trademark counterfeiting by using Japanese Foreign Ministry Records and various contemporary market surveys conducted in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and ShanghaiShanghai , and explores the economic realities and cultural topographiesCultural topography of East Asia in the early twentieth century.