Conscription insurance in pre-war Japan - Private enterprise and national interest

Japan’s Conscription Law of 1873 constituted a core element of the military reforms implemented by the Meiji government. The law implied an additional burden in the form of a “tax in kind” which would not be shared equally, because only a small portion of those eligible to serve were actually recruited. As the government neither alleviated the hardship nor corrected the inequalities created by the conscription system, local communities and private entrepreneurs took initiative. One response was conscription insurance. Introduced toward the end of the 19th century, it established itself as an important segment of Japan’s insurance industry in pre-war Japan with a performance comparable to that of the life insurance industry. Despite its success, Japan’s conscription insurance has so far not attracted the attention of international scholars. This paper takes a first step towards filling the gap. It describes the background of the major companies, evaluates their core product and analyses the performance of the industry. It argues that a major factor in the success of the industry was the ability of the companies to position themselves and their product as serving the national interest.