Then & Now | What the Japanese were doing in Hong Kong before second world war invasion
City’s Nippon Club was well established and Japanese could enter European clubs, but whites didn’t treat them as equals. Japanese businesses thrived, from photographic shops to massage parlours and sukiyaki restaurants
Japan’s invasion and occupation of Hong Kong has been extensively – exhaustively – explored. Less remembered is its sizeable pre-war commercial and social presence.
Already a major industrialised nation at the outbreak of the first world war, in 1914, Japan made great economic gains from the lengthy conflict. With British, French and German industrial output largely redirected towards wartime production, export shortfalls to Asia were met by increased Japanese production. From India to the Pacific, all manner of consumer goods – bicycles, sewing machines, kerosene stoves, flashlights, matches, pots and pans, crockery – were imported from Japan.
Many items were well made and durable, but others were “cheap and cheerful”. In that respect, Japan’s manufacturing reputation was much like that of modern China; increasingly high standards in certain areas but, overall, a mixed bag in terms of quality. Japan’s international renown for high-quality production, especially for technology, is largely a post-war phenomenon.
After years of growing closeness between Britain and Japan, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in 1902.
During the first world war, the Japanese navy escorted Australian troop transports crossing the Indian Ocean and took over some roles from the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. But with peace came renewed commercial rivalry, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was not renewed in 1922.