Download Significance of the South Manchuria Railway Research Department

Significance of the South Manchuria Railway Research Department, 1907 to 1944
Type of Research: The Japanese had established a number of research organizations in
northeast China after the Russo-Japanese War. But the research conducted by the SMR
Research Department was immense and long term, well organized, and massively funded.
Its research focused on strategic issues important for Imperial Japan’s rising power and
growing world influence. Such issues were collecting material for railroad development
and other economic projects like how to promote more foreign trade in the region to
benefit Japan’s international trade; the impact of foreign railroads on the region’s
economy. After World War 1 the SMR spent more funds to finance field research on
agriculture, commerce, foreign trade, labor-management relations, mining and industry,
etc. In the 1930s the Research Department also enlarged its field research to examine
topics of inter-disciplinary interest: data collection regarding urban property rights in
large cities of north and east-central China; data collection regarding numerous village
studies in northeast China, especially in Hopei and Shantung provinces; data collection
regarding merchant behavior in Shanghai and Jiangnan region in late 1930s and early
1940s; a huge survey of minerals and other rare, valuable materials between 1937-1944
on China’s strategic importance for Japan as expressed in raw materials, etc. SMR also
published a splendid research journal that published the results of scores of field research
projects about markets, economic organizations, family structure and behavior,
customary law, land tenure, etc.
Significance of SMR Materials for expanding our knowledge about China
Chinese research about China began in earnest under the Republic of China in the late
1920s and 1930s. First, SMR research is still far greater in quantity of publications about
Chinese society, economy, polity, et. cetera. than the research conducted by Chinese
scholars and their organized research after 1928. Second, the best work by SMR scholars
relates to the research about institutions or formal and informal rules and norms and
ideology of Chinese society, etc. Third, there is a huge collection of SMR research on
minerals and other vital resources from 1937 to 1944 when all research virtually stopped.
This has never been seen or used by foreigners. Fourth, there are specific, large SMR
surveys about topics relating to urban and rural property rights that would explain
whether the management of such property rights was similar or different throughout
Chinese society. Fifth, the SMR research bureau and other research organizations
collected huge amounts of information about village household assets, transactions, debt,
credit, taxes, productivity, ;etc. The huge amount of statistical data in these rural village
surveys allow for sophisticate econometric analysis of household behavior such as
savings, consumption, investment, taxing, property ownership, etc. All of this is arranged
by specific farming households in villages.
The best collection of SMR data is in the new library of the Academy of Natural Sciences.
The problem is that the library has rules forbidding outsiders from using or examining the
SMR library.
Let me conclude that the SMR materials cited above still can expand our understanding
of how Chinese organized their lives according to social strata and other variables.