By Jeffrey C. Guarneri, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Japan’s interwar period (1918-1941) was a time of profound changes in Japan’s ports of international trade, cities which simultaneously helped to drive Japan’s rise to world economic power status during World War I and became highly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the global economy thereafter. The historiography on Japan’s interwar period posits this vulnerability, and the many economic crises that laid it bare, as among several catalysts for Japan’s descent into a “dark valley” of nationalism, international isolation, economic autarky, and war in the 1930s. However, when viewed from the perspective of Japan’s commercial ports, whose fortunes depended on their country’s continued membership in the liberal international order even amidst strained circumstances, we see that local boosters (government officials, businessmen, local media, and educators) in these cities doubled down on official narratives for their cities which drew on their respective international maritime networks to define their communities in global terms, rather than bending inexorably toward militarism and a departure from the international community.
Bird’s-eye-view map Kanagawa Prefecture (1934)
The resulting book, 
