昭和初期日本の新聞用紙カルテルと外紙輸入

Abstract

In Japan, the newsprint manufacturers founded a cartel for the cooperative sales of newsprint in 1901. It intended to control the domestic market. But the newspaperdom succeeded to curtail the import duties on newsprint in 1906, and so sometimes was able to import cheaper foreign-made newsprint easily. Consequently, the cartel couldn't control the market satisfactorily.Under those market structures, plenty of cheap newsprint began to be imported from Northern Europe and Canada after 1930; it was regarded, especially about the Canadian newsprint, as dumping among the Japanese persons concerned in those days, and it induced industrial reorganization of Japan's paper manufacturing in 1933.But that commonly accepted understanding as dumping overlooked the influence of exchange fluctuation of those days. As the concluding remarks, after the Japan's lifting of the gold embargo in 1930, yen revaluation served to reduce the yen basis imported prices. So the importation wasn't dumping. But after the final gold ban in 1931, yen devaluation didn't raise prices, because several foreign manufacturers began to dump on the Japanese market. However the dumping was begun after the informal decision of the above-mentioned industrial reorganization.