ABSTRACT
THE Siberian adventure had closed in shame and dishonour for all the participants, but it was to be long before Japan was to be free of it. Only very fitfully did it become a major interest in Japan, where there were many other matters to occupy public attention. Symptomatic of the times was the great Kyushu scandal, which dragged its slow length along throughout 1918. At Yawata, in Kyushu, near the coalfields, the Japanese Government set up a great smelting and steel-works. It was the foremost example of the policy of Government leading the way in industry. A plant so enormous could not, perhaps, have been started by private enterprise in a country coming late and inexperienced into modern industry, but there was always much dispute as to its management and much mystery regarding its finances. It helped Japanese industry and it hindered it, its position being an anomalous one and its policy a fluctuating compromise between trying to justify its existence by making a profit and benefiting industry at large without regard to commercial consideration. Early in February 1918 a sensation was caused by the suicide of the manager of the works, Oshikawa Norikichi. An official inquiry into the administration of the works showed that the suicide was, without doubt, the result of fear of imminent disclosures of corruption. Inquiries were pursued; everybody denounced everybody else in the hope of saving himself. Detectives even examined the books of drapers in order to find corroborative evidence that officials’ wives had been the recipients of expensive presents.
