Imitation, Counterfeiting, and the Market in Early Twentieth Century Japan and China: Intra-Asian Trade in Modern Small Sundry Goods

Abstract

This chapter seeks to contribute to the current scholarly conversation among economists about “market quality” by examining the concept in a historical case study of cultural transformation. The vehicles of analysis are product imitation and trademark counterfeiting, problems which occurred frequently in early twentieth century Asian markets of modern small sundry goods. Reframing this essentially “economic” question as a historical formulation opens our eyes to its heretofore under-recognized dimensions: the normative drivers of economic expansion, such as technological transfer and innovation, have often accompanied their deviant variants in the form of counterfeiting and lower-quality imitation. The manufacturing of such “new products” and the emergence of markets for low-end shoddy merchandise, however, often lead to the original products’ wider dissemination and greater acceptance by consumers, with the effect of pervasive and deep-seated cultural transformation. Imitations of Western sundry consumer goods made in modern Japan were exported in large volumes to China and became a marker and driver of new ways of life and modes of thinking, especially in the coastal cities. The chapter examines the problems of Japanese small business manufacturers’ product imitation and trademark counterfeiting by using Japanese Foreign Ministry Records and various contemporary market surveys conducted in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shanghai, and explores the economic realities and cultural topographies of East Asia in the early twentieth century.