The Shakai Taishu Party's post-Showa depression economic policy

In the research to date on the Army Pamphlet of 1934, the political conflict that arose over the publication has been assessed as political intervention on the part of the Army, and the praise for the pamphlet by Shakai Taishu-To 社会大衆党 （STP） socialist party Leader Aso Hisashi has often been regarded as stemming from the Party's intentions to partner with the Army. However, this politically oriented understanding fails to consistently explain the fact that the STP soon withdrew its support for the Army's economic policy, but not its plan to partner with the Army in other aspects.　In order to clarify this issue, the author of the present article focuses on the process of the formulation and development of the STP's “mass inflation”（taishu infure 大衆インフレ） policy and analyzes how the Army's concept of “broadly-defined national defense”（kogi kokubo-ron 広義国防論） fits into the context of that policy, while emphasizing how the events unfolded on the regional level, in order to focus on the STP's overall ideas rather than the personal opinions of its leadership. His findings are as follows.　To begin with, although the “mass inflation” policy was formulated by Party leaders, it was also supported by STP rank and file members interested in overcoming the Depression through local initiatives, and thus became a unifying policy at the end of 1933 after the conclusion of the second Party Congress.　Secondly, given the fact that the Army became interested in organizing and mobilizing industrial workers and farmers in early 1934, the leaders of the STP secretly contacted the Army in order to participate in the formulation of its “broadly-defined national defense” agenda.　Therefore, the STP's support of the 1934 Army Pamphlet was not limited to the personal opinions of its leaders, but rather a party-wide attitude rooted in its unified “mass inflation” policy.　These new facts suggest that the STP possessed a certain degree of cohesiveness as a unified socialist party, supported by a rise of populism in Japan's local communities following the Showa Depression. The STP's support for the Army Pamphlet also suggests the existence of an alternative for representing the economic demands of workers and farmers outside of parliamentarism.