Industrial Cooperatives as Safety Nets: The Kanō Industrial Cooperative Coped with the Interwar Economic Depressions

In the 1920s and 1930s Japan experienced a protracted slump. By the latter half of the 1930s, urban areas began to show signs of an economic recovery, but regional economies, in particular rural areas, remained exposed to crises. In the interwar period, those regions that had experienced expanding income growth led by cash crops such as rice and sericulture, eventually faced declining prices for those goods. Industrial cooperatives and their networks which had strong roots in rural area, tried to cope with the severe situation. This chapter verifies the roles of these financial networks and industrial cooperatives with a micro-study of Kanō Village, Chiisagata County, Nagano Prefecture. The cooperative took advantage of low-interest funds provided by the Deposit Bureau and the cooperative financing network of industrial cooperatives in order to supply funds to cooperative members at relatively low-interest. The case of the Kanō Industrial Cooperative demonstrates the profound impact that a cooperative organization that maintains strong external links and functions for the betterment of the regional economy and society can have in a region. Its varied efforts helped the community to survive a prolonged economic crisis and acted as a kind of safety net.