The use of accounting information for the sugar business operations of the South Seas Development Company

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between labour and the accounting information disclosed by the South Seas Development Company (SSDC), one of Japan’s ‘special companies’, during the 1920s and 1930s. The primary focus is on the company’s financial statements and detailed schedules relating to its sugar business. These were submitted through the Oriental Colonization Company, the SSDC’s parent company, to the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, which served as the supervisory agency. In a broad sense, the study seeks to cast light on the role of accounting in resolving labour disputes in non-Anglo-Saxon settings by viewing the situation from a technology of government perspective. It is shown that the accounting information provided by the SSDC was used to frame the reality of labour life as related to Japanese colonial management and enabled the supervising government agency to monitor the adequacy of the SSDC’s proposed solution to the problem, i.e. the distribution of income between the company and its tenant farmers.