Woman's Place in Japan's Great Depression: Reflections on the Moral Economy of Deflation

2004/06/01 by Mark Metzler · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Japanese History and Culture #Political Economy and Marxism #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

paper · doi:10.1353/jjs.2004.0045

openalex publication_date 2004/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

There is a characteristic moral economy of deflation, and it can be traced with clarity in the case of Japan's long deflation of the 1920s. Deflation emerged as an issue in 1919 and reached an extreme in 1929-31, when the Hamaguchi Osachi cabinet adopted the depression-inducing policy of restoring the yen to gold convertibility at its old prewar value. To support its deflation policy, the cabinet launched an extraordinary campaign to induce households to reduce their consumption. Consumption was a specifically gendered conception, and women's place as subjects and as objects of consumption became the symbolic center of a historic confrontation between orthodox "monetarist" and novel "Keynesian" ideas.

Citations

• Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System
• THE MORAL ECONOMY OF THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
• Luxury is the Enemy: Mobilizing Savings and Popularizing Thrift in Wartime Japan

Cited by

• The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan
• Stories of ideal Japanese subjects from the great Kantō earthquake of 1923
• Great Depression [wikipedia]