The Money Doctors from Japan: Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the Yen Bloc, 18951937

Money and finance have been among the most potent tools of colonial power. This study investigates the Japanese experiment with financial imperialismor yen diplomacyat several key moments between the acquisition of Taiwan in 1895 and the outbreak of the SinoJapanese War in 1937. Through authoritarian monetary reforms and lending schemes, government officials and financial middlemen served as money doctors who steered capital and expertise to Japanese official and semi-official colonies in Taiwan, Korea, China, and Manchuria.

Michael Schiltz points to the paradox of acute capital shortages within the Japans domestic economy and aggressive capital exports to its colonial possessions as the inevitable but ultimately disastrous outcome of the Japanese governments goal to exercise macroeconomic control over greater East Asia and establish a self-sufficient yen bloc. Through their efforts to implement their policies and contribute to the expansion of the Japanese empire, the money doctors brought to the colonies a series of banking institutions and a corollary capitalist ethos, which would all have a formidable impact on the development of the receiving countries, eventually affecting their geopolitical position in the postcolonial world.